Hygienic rules were most strictly carried out. The cottage, luckily, was surrounded by bonnie country gardens, in which Mary spent much of her time, not even fearing rain, because she wore a cloak—not an india-rubber mackintosh, be assured—and strong boots, without disease-producing goloshes. From top to bottom, from one end to another, the house was kept spotlessly clean, free from dust, and dry.
Mary was no worse at the end of a month! Mary was better at the end of three months!! Mary was well, and the blush of health was on her cheeks, at the end of eighteen months!!!
The old-fashioned doctor never spoke to me after I put my foot on his cod-liver oil. He used to pass me on the road like a speck of March dust, and he told a friend of mine I was an insolent young dog. No doubt he was right. I had all the faith and arrogance of youth, but—I cured Mary.
It was at the end of the eighteen months I went to sea, and seven long years elapsed before I saw her again. She was married, and had two bonnie healthy children. She is living still, and her family too.
Now, mother, this is a true story, and I have only told it as a proof of the benefits derivable from fatty and flesh-forming foods, perfect hygiene, and fresh air indoors and out in cases of incipient consumption; and not in these alone are such health-giving and curative agents beneficial, but in all cases of chronic ill-health in young girls.
In relating my little story of Mary, I may have seemed to disparage cod-liver oil. I merely wish, however, to imply that it is only in cases where it can be easily digested that it can do any good, and that in all others it is positively injurious.
Mind this, mater, that the days have long gone past when people pinned their faith on medicine alone in the cure of diseases. Indeed, mostly every ailment of a chronic nature, if curable at all, has a better chance if physic is left severely alone and a thorough system of hygiene and dietetics adopted; for if medicine is taken, people as a rule think that this is of greater consequence than good food and a life spent in the fresh and open air.
What are called “peptonised foods” are often beneficial where there is want of proper digestive power, or pepsin in the form of tablets may be used. These are to be had at most respectable chemists, and the dose is marked on the bottle.
The new food-medicines called vivol and marrol, so highly spoken of in medical journals, should in many cases supersede the use of cod-liver oil, or even shark-liver oil, in the case of a girl who does not seem to be thriving.
The Scotch word “dwining” is very expressive. It was usually applied to girls just entered on their teens, who do not appear to be healthy, and are but little likely to make old bones. They are rather poor in flesh, growing rather rapidly, perhaps, but not “building as they go,” as the farmers say about rick-making. They have but little appetite, are pale in face, flabby in substance, have little real life about them, and are very thick-headed of a morning. They feel the cold much, and therefore seldom have their bedrooms properly ventilated. Moreover, they do not make bone. It is as if Nature said to herself, “I need not bone in the case of this girl, for it will never be wanted.”