The Health Habit
There are three serious objections to my health prescriptions ❦ First, I make no charge for them. Second, they are written in plain English, without myth, miracle or mystery, and can be understood even by the mediocre mind. Third, you have to fill the prescription yourself, and this costs effort. Sickness is a selfish thing. If you are well you are expected to work, and give your time and talent to helping other people. If you are sick you are supposed to be immune from many unpleasant tasks and duties. Mark Twain said he was never really happy except on two occasions. One was when he was given that Oxford degree and wore amarvelous red cloak and a mortar-board hat; and the other was when he had the measles and expected to die. The joy of holding the center of the stage and having the whole family in tears, just on his own account, was worth all the pangs ❦ But, indeed, there were no pangs. Mark was a humorist, and a humorist is a man who has the sense of values, and to have the sense of values is wisdom. Mark was a great philosopher as well as a humorist ❦ Not only did he testify that pangs and pains are the attributes of life, not death, and that there is no pain in death, but he also gave testimony that sickness is an acute form of selfishness. The sick man disarranges the entire scheme of house-keeping wherever he is, unless he be in a hospital. To have his meals served to him in bed he regards as natural and right ❦ For once he holds the center of the stage—all dance attendance. Doctors come, nurses run for this and that, neighbors call and inquire. He is It.¶ The paranoiac is a person who craves attention, and rather than go unnoticed, commits crime. Just observe how most sick people obtrude their maladies upon their friends, and then tell me whether sickness is not usually a form of paranoia! Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness. Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone, and a surfeit of food. We eat too much and breathe too little ❦ Life is combustion—the digestive tract is a boiler. And as oxygen is necessary to fire, so it is to life. Thevalue of exercise in the open air lies in the fact that it is getting a goodly draft of oxygen through your system, and this forced draft is both eliminating refuse and burning up slag ❦ These things are all so trite and true that it seems silly to write this for cultured people, and yet cultured and educated people are sick quite as much as the other kind. In fact, more so, since necessity is often removed and the person has the privilege of going to bed in the morning, getting up when he pleases, eating a multiplicity of dishes that set up an internecine war, giving the saw-buck absent treatment, and forcing or bribing other folks to wait on him. ¶ It is a curious comment on our civilization to find our great sanitariums and health-resorts full of college graduates. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Vassar and Wellesley are all represented constantly at Battle Creek, Dansville, Mount Clemens, Hot Springs, Richfield and Alma ❦ Imagine an LL. D. beinggiven vicarious exercise by a healthy colored man who can neither read nor write; a Ph. D. looked after by a saucy slip of a nurse, in becoming cap and apron, fresh from the farm or paper-box factory; an M. D. vigorously Muldooned by a man who knows nothing of medicine, but something of health! ¶ A great surgeon tells me that he has never yet seen a case of appendicitis where the patient has not been addicted to the Beecham Habit. That is to say, this disease is the result of medicine, just as are many others. ¶ So here is the prescription: Get the Health Habit—by throwing physic to the dogs, because it will not hurt the dogs, since they know better than to swallow it; drink plenty of pure water; eat what you like, but do not overeat; have a regular daily occupation; breathe much and deeply in the open air; have a veranda bedroom, open if possible on two sides, or at least sleep in a room with windows run up wide, even if thewater-pitcher freezes; think well of everybody, especially doctors, for good doctors everywhere are practising a Science of Prevention, and will corroborate these suggestions ❦ They are doing the best they can, considering the ignorance, superstition and inertia which they have to combat—often in their own minds, and those of others.