Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

by Upton Sinclair; Michael Williams

The process by which the white cells fight for us may be watched in the transparent tissue of a frog’s foot or the wing of a bat. If a few disease germs are introduced into this tissue, the white cells may be seen to accumulate on the wall of the blood vessel just opposite where the germs have entered. “Each cell begins to push out a minute thread of its tissue,” writes Dr. Kellogg, in describing the process, “thrusting it through the wall of its own blood vessel. Little by little the farther end of this delicate filament which has been pushed through the wall grows larger and larger, while the portion of the cell within the vessel lessens, and after a little time each cell is found outside the vessel, and yet no openings are left behind. Just how they accomplish this without leaving a gap behind them is one of the mysteries for which Science has for many years in vain sought a solution. The vessel wall remains as perfect as it was before. Apparently, each cell has made a minute opening and has then tucked itself through, as one might tuck a pocket handkerchief through a ring, invisibly closing up behind itself the opening made. Once outside the vessel, these wonderful body-defenders, moving here and there, quickly discover the germs and proceed at once to swallow them. If the germs are few in number, they may be in this way destroyed, for the white cells not only swallow germs, but digest them. If the number is very great, however, the cells sacrifice themselves in the effort to destroy the germs, taking in a larger number than they are able to digest and destroy. When this occurs, the germs continue to grow; more white cells make their way out of the blood vessels, and a fierce and often long-continued battle is waged between the living blood cells and the invading germs.”

Now, it must be understood that this description is not the product of any one’s imagination, but is a definitely established fact which has been studied by scientists all over the world. Because of the importance of the discovery, and of the new views of health to which it leads, we have placed a picture of this “battle of the blood” at the front of this book. It shows the leucocytes of the human body in conflict with the germs of influenza: the black dots being the germs, and the larger grayish bodies the leucocytes. We have chosen a photograph rather than a drawing, so that the reader may realize that he is seeing something which actually has existence. We request him to study the picture and fix it upon his mind, for it is not too much to say that from it is derived every principle of health which is set forth in the course of this book.

THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH

The human body is a complex and intricate organism, in some wonderful and entirely incomprehensible way integrating the activities of all these billions of other living organisms. Each and every one of these latter has its function to fulfill, and the life of the individual body is a life of health so long as the unity of all its organisms is maintained. Outside of the body are millions of hostile organisms assaulting it continuously; and the problem of health is the problem of enabling it to make headway against its enemies for as long a period as possible. Every act of a human being has its effect upon this battle; at every moment of your life you are either strengthening the power of your own organism or strengthening your enemies. Once the organism is unable to beat back its enemies, health begins to fail and death and complete disintegration is the ultimate result.

It must be understood that the peril of these hostile germs is not merely that they devour the substance upon which the body’s own organisms have to be nourished. If that were all, they might remain in the body as parasites, and by taking additional nourishment a man might sustain life in spite of them. Nor is it even that they multiply with such enormous rapidity; the peril is that they throw off as the products of their own activity a number of poisons, which are as deadly to the human body as any known. These poisons are produced much more rapidly than they can be eliminated from the system, and so they fill the blood, and death ensues.

Thus the problem becomes clear. In the first place, what can we do to keep disease germs from securing entrance to the body; and second, what can we do to strengthen the body’s army of defense so that the fate of any which do find entrance may be immediate destruction?

HEALTH, LIKE DISEASE, IS CATCHING

In actual practice it is found that the second problem is by far the more important one. Some germs we can avoid. If we boil all the water that we drink we will not be very apt to have typhoid. If we exterminate rats and mosquitoes and flies and fleas, we will not have yellow fever, or malaria, or plague. But we cannot hope to do this at present in the case of such diseases as, for instance, consumption, grippe, and influenza. If we live in a city, we take into our lungs and throat millions of the germs of these diseases every day. Therefore the one hope that is left is to keep ourselves in such a condition of health that the army of our bodies shall be able to destroy these germs. When the blood is in a healthy condition, the white cells are numerous, powerful, and active, but when the blood flows stagnantly, or when it is impoverished, then the white cells are few and the forces of disease obtain a foothold.

Healthy men can go through many epidemics with impunity. Because the Japanese army was an army of healthy men, its death rate from those diseases which usually follow in the wake of all armies was lower than the world had ever known before. Robert Ingersoll once said that if he had been God and had made the world, he would have made health “catching,” and not disease. As a matter of fact, health is catching. It abounds in the very air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the movements of every muscle and the play of every fibre and nerve of the body; it comes from and is nourished by each and every one of the bodily actions and functions; while disease is only secured by persistent transgressions of the proper way of living, and by injurious habits and customs that result in lowering the “vital resistance.”

This vital resistance is the innate power of the body to keep itself strong; its very lifeforce. This is what we mean when we say that this or that person has “a good constitution,” or has “a weak constitution.” This is the capital in the bank of each individual life, placed there by Nature at the birth of that life, and increased or diminished by each and every action of our bodies, and also of our minds. As Rokitansky, the eminent German scientist, said, “Nature heals. This is the first and greatest law of therapeutics—one which we must never forget. Nature creates and maintains, therefore she must be able to heal.”