Health: How to get it and keep it. / The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.

by Walter V. Woods

Action of the Heart.—The alternate contraction and dilation of the muscles of the heart constitute the heart-beats or throbs of the pulse. These vary with the individual. In the average adult, the number of beats is seventy-two per minute. In the cases of Bonaparte and Wellington the number was less than fifty. Heat, food, and exercise increase its action, as cold, fasting, and sleep diminish it. Emotion of joy, grief, and fear also exert a modifying influence.

It is a matter of wonder how the silent forces within a tree can lift from the soil, through its minute pipes, and extract from the air, through the small pores of the leaves, the many tons of material that go to make up the giant of the forest. The tons of physical energy bound up in that small organ, the human heart, is a matter no less marvelous. Estimating the amount of blood expelled by each contraction of the ventricles of the heart at four ounces, we have a total of twelve tons a day, or over four thousand tons in a year.

Assimilation.—The crowning act in the conversion of lifeless food into living tissue takes place in the meshes of the capillary network, and is called assimilation. This process is alike mysterious and wonderful. By a peculiar power of selection, each bone and muscle and tissue appropriates that portion of the blood which it needs for its own development or for the repair of the waste, and applies it in such a manner as to preserve the form and size and strength of the part, ever maintaining a proper balance of the two sides of the body, unless thwarted in its operation by some act of the individual.

Adulteration of Food Products.—National, State, and Municipal Boards of Health, and food inspectors may do much to preserve health, but when they have done all that it is possible for them to do, much will still remain for the individual. With the products of the world exposed for sale in our markets, with the advertising pages of our magazines and newspapers filled with irresistible arguments in favor of some newly-discovered breakfast food or new preparation of canned goods, the need of individual knowledge and caution daily increases.

There is cause for congratulation in the fact that those articles which constitute the larger portion of our food are but little adulterated. In the States that impose legal penalties the proportion of adulterated products is quite low. The value of a stringent law is seen in the decrease of the adulteration of cream of tartar, which, in Massachusetts, fell from forty-two per cent in samples examined in 1879, to five per cent in 1898. Spices, flavoring extracts, and canned goods afford the most promising field for adulteration.

The substitution of ingredients is prompted wholly by a desire for gain, and consists in the substitution of a cheaper for a more expensive article. It is, therefore, a question of ethics rather than of health. If the horse-radish is largely turnip, and the apple-butter chiefly pumpkin, if the currant or raspberry jelly is made of the rich juices of the parings and cores of apples, strained, colored and delicately flavored, who will say that the cheaper fraud is not as wholesome as the more expensive genuine article? In some instances there is an actual advantage to health in the substitution, but this does not justify the deception. Pure, fresh oleomargarine, however wholesome, should not be sold for butter, any more than shoddy cloth should be sold for pure wool.

Dangers to Health.—The contents of tin cans are sometimes affected by the action of the acids upon the tin or the solder. Food should not be allowed to stand in a tin can after being opened. Milk, cream, and butter are quick to take up germs of disease. Scarlet fever and typhoid fever have, in many instances, been traced to this source. The utmost cleanliness and care should be exercised in their handling.

The Diet Cure.—Over-indulgence in eating is the source of many disorders of the system. It is well, at all times, to keep within the limit of the powers of digestion. The way to give the stomach rest is to eat less food and at longer intervals.

Obesity is the result of the accumulation of the fatty properties of the blood in excess of what is needed to repair the waste of the system. The fattening process will be stopped by cutting off the supplies. A restricted diet, the avoidance of fat-producing foods, vigorous perspiration as the result of exercise, and frequent bathing, followed by friction, will be attended by a decided reduction of the superfluous fat. A merchant in England who had reached the enormous weight of four hundred and fifty-seven pounds put himself upon a diet of four ounces of animal food, six ounces of bread, and two pounds of liquid in twenty-four hours. In one week he had reduced his weight thirty pounds, and in six months he had lost one hundred and thirty-four pounds.

In France, there is a method of treatment known as “The Grape Cure.” Persons in Paris, broken down by the excitements and dissipations of the city, go off among the vineyards, breathe the pure country air, and live on grapes. From eight to twelve ounces of bread, with grapes at discretion, constitute their daily allowance of food and drink. By this treatment the impurities of the system soon pass off through the kidneys, the bowels, the lungs, and the pores of the skin, and pure, wholesome blood takes the place of that which was diseased.