CHEERFULNESS.—GOOD ADVICE.—REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.—WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.—WHINING.—LOVE AND HEALTH.—AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.—SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.—THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.—SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.—ACTION AND IDLENESS.—IDLENESS AND CRIME.—BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.—SLEEP.—DAY AND NIGHT.—“WHAT SHALL WE EAT?”—A STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.—“FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS.”—ANCIENT DIET.—COOKS IN A “STEW.”—THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.—CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.—ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.
CHEERFULNESS.—GOOD ADVICE.—REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.—WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.—WHINING.—LOVE AND HEALTH.—AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.—SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.—THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.—SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.—ACTION AND IDLENESS.—IDLENESS AND CRIME.—BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.—SLEEP.—DAY AND NIGHT.—“WHAT SHALL WE EAT?”—A STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.—“FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS.”—ANCIENT DIET.—COOKS IN A “STEW.”—THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.—CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.—ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.
Cheerfulness.
I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and happiness; before “diet,” for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats will injure him.
“How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?” asks the diseased and despondent man or woman.
Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and assume a cheerfulcountenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don’t like it, and begins to withdraw his sombre person. Keep on “keeping it up,” and the most happy results will soon follow your exertions.
Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine. “℞—A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting.”
Christian Cheerfulness.
The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:—
“Cheerfulness as a Medicine.—Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to cast gloom over the spirit thandisease. The mind sympathizes with the body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the other. Each to a certain degree determines the other’s condition. If the mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. ‘A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.’ But if the body is injured, or the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and, by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.’
“Borrowing Trouble.—Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness. ‘Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,’ says Tupper. Casting our glance ahead, we see ‘lions’ in the way; difficulties which we are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise. ‘Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’—Prov. xxvii. 1. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’—Matt. vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’
“The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts, and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.
“Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom, and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness. Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the stars through the darkness.”
Whining.
This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results. It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don’t fret and whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight,but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. “O, what a cross face that lady has got!” I heard another female exclaim but yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don’t induce such a look.
Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:—
“There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine because they have ‘no luck,’ and others’ prosperity exceeds theirs; they whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains because they whine, no one can tell why.
“Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining. It’s of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding, scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that ever lived.
“Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing.”
Love.
“Well, what has that to do with health and long life?” ask the cynic, the bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.
Everything, I reply.
The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.
“That is a bold assertion,” says my quizzer.
Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.
Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?
“God is love.” Here is the first, the fundamental principle.
He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,—to love all things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are like the ungodly, who “shall not live out half their days.” “Love God, and keep his commandments.”
“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command, than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is undefinable.
“There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.
Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of autumn.
········
I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.
Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.
And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?
Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?
········
Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.
Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.
Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.
Love never grows old, love never perisheth.”
Affection and Perfection.
Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and happiness.
To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.
You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation, or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny hand, and in pitiful tones says, “Please give me a penny, for God’s sake.”
O, give the child “love,” for God’s sake; for he so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.
Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.
The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.
Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if sheloves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other’s, or a pet canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.
Separating the Sheep and Goats.
I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable. Cheerfulness is the first step.
A very sensible writer in thePhrenological Journalsays,—
“There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades, and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well.”
Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint and girlhood’s influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving husbands and fathers.
What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the “young ladies” are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are deniednot only the association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where, if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.
I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook’s novels of society, boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of thesafestin the world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high, surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.
Fences broken down.
The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male students boarded also. There was one class of influences andpassionspervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn. And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a “right jolly good fellow,” because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them; but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the “accomplishments” referred to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at night, when “Old Prof.” was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of purity thanany other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.
And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man, drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump little miss, who he knew “had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking a ride with a gentleman scholar.”
The scholars all met in the “chapel” for prayers. Are sly glances, winks, or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.
Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.
And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?
Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by the plan of a separate education.
We all dread to grow old. Don’t talk of second childhood. Keep the first youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing this desirable state. Says thePhrenological Journal, beauty comes and goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features depends on youthfulness of feeling.
“Spring still makes spring in the mind,When sixty years are told;Love wakes anew the throbbing heart,And we are never old.”
If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will make usfeel old.
O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don’t make fun of your boy’s shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or a hat—has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?
There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or foreign. Don’t be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.
Action and Idleness.
While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote theScientific American:—
“It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the percentageof sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is 26.54—not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however, is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.
“How true this makes the assertion,—‘Every inventor who abridges labor, and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his race.’ There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely change them.”
Idleness induces Crime.
This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and children.
Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters of gold: “Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any crime.” How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is notgenteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both parents and children.
Beauty and Development.
Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.
Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active, prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative of beauty, strength, and long life?
“The horse,” answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal. When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish habits.
Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting him:—
“We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous. ‘O, it’s because he never did anything,’ said B.; ‘he never worked, thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.’ Since hearing that remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true—and it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original design.”
Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.
Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or licentious.
Sleep.
By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those
“Early to bed, and early to rise,Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,”
fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment upon careful and continued observation during many years.
The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or five o’clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of such deluded or unfortunate persons,it does it at the expense of his length of days. He will not live so long for his over-doing.
Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously directed, with warm water,rubbing dry and warm, and cover up. Lie on one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in clothes worn during the day.
Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.
Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more than adults. Do not lie in bed long afterawaking at morning. Open your window wide as soon as you arise—it is supposed to be partially open at the top all night.
In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils. Night air isnotinjurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep when sleepy—this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.
What shall we eat?
Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards.This is the best general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.
There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon “diet” that most sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of writers, if not their physician’s directions on that score.
Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:—
“For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon,from time to time; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading; jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful young women and an enlivening glass.”
Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation,might well say that “John Brown’s prescriptions seem a caricature of his system.”
A “Stomach-mill” and a “Stewing-pot.”
There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked, playfully, “To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill; some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough, nor anything but astomach.” All that can be said is, that digestion is a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.
“Five Minutes for Refreshments.”
“Murder! murder!” the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as “Five minutes for refreshments.”
Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more likely to “set well” than a light cake or a cracker, though it be “Bond’s best,” if hurried down the throat.
What the English call the “blarsted Yankee style” of gulping down the food half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about “mills.” Why, that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.
Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for twenty-four hours.
“Much has been said about exercising after eating, andthe truth has been often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion. Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply thatviolentexercise, takenimmediatelyafter eating, interferes with digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be fairly commenced.
“The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do it.
“It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour, provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the twenty-four hours,—that he has done so being true, probably, in most cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it will thus act, it is clear that he had better bedisturbed when awake, for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system.”
Ancient Diet.
“How did them oldanti-delusionfellows live?” once asked an honest old farmer of the writer. “They must have lived differently than we live, or they would not have told so many years as they did.”
True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable. The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no “nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, or cloves,” no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach, tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, “buckwheat cakes and molasses.” What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour’s time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern introduction.
The Green Grocery of the Classics.
The cabbage has had a singular destiny—in one country an object of worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies lying in their arms.Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as medicine,—in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley prefers the latter, for he says that “a cabbage will beat a beet if the cabbage gets a-head.”) The same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original “grass” was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds’ weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been deteriorated by asparagus! “Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!” is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.
A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.
Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes grew lessrapidly into aristocratic favor; thedictumof Galen was against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber—the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce, which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of Belgium—hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with wine, in order to increase their flavor.
But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Cæsars inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them.
I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and that it was notuncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, butto eat their own arms! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor. It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were not “game.” Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, “detected as being guilty of garlic,” suffered banishment from the royal presence during the entire month.
It is long since the above instructive article on the “Green Groceries of the Classics,” by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as instructive.
Animal or Vegetable Diet?
Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I should recommend vegetable diet.
I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit system, purchasing onSaturday nights, when there is a rush at the stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish would obviate.
I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher’s hand their last penny for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake, or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.
Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes, contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until they have teeth.
A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread. Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread, etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.
CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).
CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!—UNIVERSAL REIGN.—SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.—WARNINGS.—BAD POSITIONS.—SCHOOL-HOUSES.—ENGLISH THEORY.—PREVENTIVES.—AIR AND SUNSHINE.—SCROFULA.—A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.—“WASP WAISTS.”—CHANGE OF CLIMATE.—“TOO LATE!”—WHAT TO AVOID.—HUMBUGS.—COD-LIVER OIL.—STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.—A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.—SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.—SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.—FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.—A YANKEE DISEASE.—CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.—“GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.”—OTHER THINGS TO AVOID.—A TENDER POINT.
CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!—UNIVERSAL REIGN.—SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.—WARNINGS.—BAD POSITIONS.—SCHOOL-HOUSES.—ENGLISH THEORY.—PREVENTIVES.—AIR AND SUNSHINE.—SCROFULA.—A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.—“WASP WAISTS.”—CHANGE OF CLIMATE.—“TOO LATE!”—WHAT TO AVOID.—HUMBUGS.—COD-LIVER OIL.—STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.—A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.—SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.—SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.—FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.—A YANKEE DISEASE.—CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.—“GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.”—OTHER THINGS TO AVOID.—A TENDER POINT.
Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common acceptation of the term consumption.Phthisisis from the Greek, meaningto consume. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption; in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England, the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling! One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.
Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth, maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.
Tupper wrote with an understanding when he penned the following:—
“Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty,Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of decline;All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily,Her flaxen tresses rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture;Hath not thy heart said of her, ‘Alas! poor child of weakness’?”
Yes, the monster “Decline” seeks particularly the fair-skinned, of “transparent beauty,” and those of the “light blue eye and flaxen hair,” for his victims. Nor are the illiterate alone his subjects, but men of the most talented minds, men versed in arts, sciences, andbelles-lettres, professors of hygiene and physiology, and the very practitioners of the art of medicine themselves, are often the shining marks of the insidious monster whom they by erudition diligently seek to repel.
Because of the too prevalent belief of the invincibleness of consumption, it has been neglected more than any other disease. The victims to its wiles have hoped against hope, while the enemy has woven his web quietly and flatteringly around them.
You must first be warned of his earliest aggression.
Signs of his Approach.
He is a deceiver. Let us be wary of him.
We have been too negligent in this matter. Let us remember that prevention is far better than cure.
The slight fatigue on the least exertion we have counted as “nothing.” The hectic flush of the cheeks is too often mistaken for a sign of health. The cursory pains of the chest, or left side, or under the shoulder-blades, are disregarded, or, if noticed at all, are mentioned as though “of no account.” The slight hacking cough is scarcely heeded; for do not people often cough without having consumption, and without raising blood? True, true; and this is the stronghold of the deceiver.
Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There is a “consumption of the blood,” and a variety of morbid phenomena, which cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.
A NATURAL POSITION.AN UNNATURAL POSITION.
A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the slumbering enemy. Teething ininfancy not unfrequently develops the scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system—eithermarasmusortabes mesenterica—follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove fatal.
The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and standing, are conducive to consumption.
Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings, particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air. The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to health.
Early Symptoms.—Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on exertion, with rapid pulse.
Second Stage.—Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period; swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the hose and garters atnight; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse); night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the eyes. Sputa increases to the
Third Stage.—Diarrhœa not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood; the person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a cadaverous appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily; debility increases with the cough, or hæmoptosis occurs often, until death finally closes the scene.
These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them, not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to rules for health and longevity.
If this fearful disease was better understood by the people, it would prove far less destructive of human life. Undomesticated animals do not die of it; domesticated ones do. What does that imply? That the people have engendered the disease! Let the “people,” then, take the first step in preventing its ravages.
Theory of Consumption.
At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine at London, Dr. Priory read a paper on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following propositions:—
1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena, and not a morbid unity.
2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.
3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical remedies.
4.There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which constitute the disorder.
5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by appropriate means.
6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic precautions may prevent its development.
7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to receive different names, according to their nature.
8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life has been considerably prolonged.
9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated above.
10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.
11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.
Preventives of Consumption.
If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair, we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping, they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,—which they cannot look into as they can their watch or old boots,—first try to patch themselves up, instead of employing a professional “cobbler of poor health and broken constitutions.”
Before me are Wistar’s, Wilson’s, and Gray’s Works onAnatomy. I have read them, or Krause’s, more than twenty years. They contain all that has been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is “Physiology,” which treats of the offices or various functions of the system. I do not comprehend it all. “Great ignoramus!” Nobody is perfected in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature, and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases safely.
CORRECT POSITION.INCORRECT POSITION.
Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive of it. I should wrongyou, and endanger your lives by the deception thus put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.
Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,—
First, Plenty of God’s pure, free air; andsecond, sunshine. These are indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
“Madam,” I said, “I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no sunshine permeates by day;” for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked astonished at my Œdipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
“Yes, sir,” she finally answered, “he always sleeps in a room where the sunlight don’t enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am discouraged.”
Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,—
“Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him.”
She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her mind,—
“Put a plant into his room—plant into Johnny’s room.”
The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.
It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but, like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and without excuse for their ignorance.
Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.
Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear flannels the year round—thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet dry—avoid “wafer soles,”—and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus Ward termed “too much baths.” Employ soap and a small quantity of water, with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the surface.
Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers, instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you understand?
See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care and instruction!...
A jolly fat Grandmother.
“Wasp Waists.”—This is what I heard a fine-looking though tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he passed two young and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.
HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE.
So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly old lady whom I knew as my “grandmarm.” She had a waist half as large around as a flour barrel.
“O, horrid creature!” exclaims a modern belle.
But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot—only half breathe! And my “grandmarm” had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a hundred years old. You won’t live to see a third of that time. Did our grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived well—mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies for the rising generation.
O, but she was jolly—and so were her pies!
An Irish blunderer once said, “Ah, ye don’t see any of the young gals of the present day fourscore and tin yearsould;” and probably we should not see many of our present “crop” ifweshould survive that age.
Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can take a full, deep breath. “Not one in a score or two!” So I thought.
Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air through the nostrils,—where God first breathed the breath of life,—and give room for the lungs to expand, and the “sore places” will all disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady, moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all conception.
Consumption is Curable.
“Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?” is a question which is often seriously asked.
“O, yes,” I reply.
“What are the proofs?”
Where on dissection we find cicatrices,—places in thelungs where tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed all sound, the scar only remaining—what then? Here is positive proof that consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.
Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error—fatal to thousands—to suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed. Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the patient made comfortable during many years.
Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small stock of vitality,—just as some places are less expensive in which to live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten years, have often written respecting the climate west of the RockyMountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or her, to select California.
Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among strangers....
Avoid Humbugs.
Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant physician once said to me,—
“Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are, to be sure!” she exclaimed. “Why, I have got that disease myself (not the foolish disease, but consumption), and don’t know what to do to save my own life.”
That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas, dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he possessed was stolen from him.
Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says that “the bath-tub is a humbug.” I believe him. While you avoid drowning inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.
Cod-liver Oil and Whiskey.
“Take cod-liver oil and die!” has become proverbial. The oil is utterly worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than the nasty oil from fishes’ livers. The oil is often given, not as a medicine, but as an article of nourishment. Ifthe patient so understands it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold aton or twoof the oil, told me that “all the iodine or phosphorus that it contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ.”
If good, wholesome bread, butter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient must die—provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.
I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of the phosphates, as “phosphate of lime,” and iron, soda, and other combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by “his physician;” but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better “change horses in crossing a river,” than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby! There are two classes of patients which the doctor has to deal with; one will follow no instructions accurately, the other swallows everything literally.
I remember a story illustrative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr. C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription, telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.
At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.
“Did you follow my directions?” inquired the physician.
“O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see—I am well!”
“I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription,” said the doctor, delighted at his success.
“I haven’t it. Why, I took it, sir.”
“Took it—the medicine, you mean,” explained the man of pills and powders.
“Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine—nothing but a paper, and I took that according to directions. That’s what cured me.”
The clown had swallowed the recipe!
The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome food,—even fat meats are beneficial,—not from medicines. Let food be one thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver oil. He would not upon bread or beef.
Sit and Lie Straight.
Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing for consumption. Our illustrations will give the reader a correct idea of our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the position which many girls assume while sitting at their work by them from three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later lead to consumption.
A HEALTHY POSITION.
Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly, resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any substance exceptingfeathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any easy position. If tired, and one can consistently “loll,” recline to one side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires to “rest fast,” sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.
A CONSUMPTIVE POSITION.
If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. “To bend up double, man never was made,” says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.
“Didn’t your ‘grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years’ on a feather bed?” My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.
“Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have been living now. My grandmother’s good habits, free use of muscle, sunshine, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of sleeping on a feather bed in winter.”