fruits, it is much safer to use them for fuel in the body than to run
the risk of giving it anything which might put the delicate machine out
of order.
I saw a poem not long ago, written by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, which you
might like to have read to you. It is called
[Illustration: Various fruits]
A VEGETARIAN SONG.
“You may talk of mutton-chop,
You may say it is tip-top
For a man who wants to live both well and long;
But you’re much behind the time,
As I’ll show you in this rhyme;
For there’s better food than flesh to make one well and strong.
”CHORUS——
“On the glorious trees! on the glorious trees!
There the fruits and nuts, the fruits and nuts do ever grow.
This is heaven’s own food,
God pronounced it very good;
Yes, upon the trees, kissed by the breeze, the best foods grow.
“There are pippins rich and rare,
There are plums and peaches fair,
There are huckleberries, raspberries, and pears so sweet;
There are grapes upon the vine,
Never made for use as wine,
All of which with one accord invite us, ‘Come and eat.’
“There’s the orange and the lime,
Lemons, too, for summer-time,
Which so often do refresh us in the toil and heat;
There are nectarines so bright,
There are cherries, red and white,
All of which with one accord invite us, ‘Come and eat.’
“There are English walnuts rich,
And delicious almonds, which
All alone supply us cream and milk, how rich a treat!
There are coconuts and pine,
Pecans, hickory-nuts so fine,
All of which with one accord invite us, ‘Come and eat.’
“There’s the ox, an honest beast,
See him served up at a feast,
Notwithstanding he has been a faithful, true helpmeet
To the farmer in his task;
Yet he never once has asked
More than humblest fare, and now his blood cries, ‘Do not eat.’
“There’s that scavenger, the pig,
Grown to be so fat and big
That he scarce can stand or walk upon his clumsy feet;
Though he lives a life of ease,
He is full of dire disease,
And he surely is of all things most unfit to eat.
“There’s the sheep with fleece so warm,
Never did a bit of harm,
But for cruel man provides good clothing, warm and neat;
Ere you raise the sharpened knife,
Cut his throat, and take his life,
Listen to his sad though mute appeal, ‘Don’t slay to eat.’
“There’s the oyster in his bed,
Eating everything that’s dead;
He’s the scavenger that cleans the bottom of the sea;
He lives in the mud and slime,
Catching microbes all the time,
And his occupation surely says, ‘Oh, don’t eat me!’
“There are turkeys, daily fed
On the best of household bread,
So that they’ll be fat and toothsome for Thanksgiving day;
What a sin it is and shame,
Crime without a proper name,
For a man these gentle creatures first to feed, then slay!
“There are birds that sing a lay
Full of joy at break of day,
That will silent be forever at the set of sun.
Some will slay the songsters sweet
On pretense that they would eat,
While a thousand more admit they kill them just for fun.
“List and hear these creatures all,
Mighty beasts as well as small,
With a thousand, thousand voices, loud and long repeat,
We beseech you, let us live;
Take not life you can not give;
Only kill ferocious creatures; never slay to eat.
“It was God’s appointed plan,
Given long ago to man,
That no creature of another creature’s flesh should eat,
But that all alike should dine
On the fruit of tree and vine
And the toothsome grains, which heaven has given man for meat.
“Better far it is to be
A vegetarian, don’t you see?
As thus we take our daily food direct from heaven’s own hand.
When we eat another’s flesh,
We’re not taking food that’s fresh,
But are living on a diet that is second hand.
“Oh, then, let us all resolve
That, while earth and years revolve,
We will never more pollute our mouths with bloody meat,
But will choose a diet pure,
From disease and germs secure,
And of fruits and nuts and grains so wholesome ever eat!”
HELEN: I’m glad you read it to us, mother. It _does_ seem, when the
cattle eat the grass and grain, and then we eat _them_, as though we
were eating second-hand food.
PERCY: I don’t propose to do that way any longer. I think I should have
what I eat first-hand, as well as the sheep and ox.
MOTHER: I am sure if you carry out your resolve you will have pure
blood and a more healthy body. I saw some pictures of children not
long ago who had never tasted meat in their lives, and they were as
happy and hearty as you could wish to see. I want you each to act for
yourselves in this matter, and do what you think will be the best for
your health.
ELMER: Is salt a food, mother?
MOTHER: No; salt is a mineral, yet it is found in all parts of the
body. It is also found in nearly all our foods. We add it to some
things when cooking to give them flavor, but it is hurtful to eat much
of it.
AMY: Are mustard, pepper, spices, ginger, and hot sauces good to eat?
MOTHER: No; some people think they _taste_ good, but they are bad for
the body. If you put some mustard on your skin, it makes it red, and
may cause a blister. You know a very little pepper in your eye makes it
smart. These hot things in the kitchen of our body-house make the walls
red, and the cooks get very cross. When people eat such things, they
become thirsty, and sometimes, instead of drinking water to cool the
heated walls and put out the fire these hot things have made, they pour
down beer, whisky, and other drinks, which makes the mischief worse.
When once the habit is formed of using such things, they keep wanting
them hotter and stronger, till nothing tastes good unless it is highly
seasoned. Many become ill, and this is one way drunkards are made.
HELEN: But how do they make drunkards, mother?
MOTHER: These hot things which people sometimes put in the stomach make
them thirsty, as I have said, and so they think they must have beer or
something stronger. Such drinks do not quench thirst, and so they keep
on drinking more and more. If you want the walls of your body-kitchen
to be a pretty pale pink color, you will keep the doors shut tight
against mustard, spices, pepper, and all hot sauces. You can teach your
taste to like the fine flavors which are in our foods already, and
which do no harm to the body.
AMY: But sugar is a good food, isn’t it, mother?
MOTHER: I thought my little girl who is so fond of sweet things would
ask this question. It is true sugar is a food, but to use much of the
kind we buy is hurtful to the body. Nearly all the foods we eat, such
as flour, oatmeal, pease, beets, and milk, have sugar in them. Some
fruits, such as figs and grapes, have a large amount. It is not well
to eat food made very sweet with sugar, such as rich cakes, jams, and
preserves. It is also harmful to eat candies and lollies, for many are
made from a poor kind of sugar, and the coloring matter used to make
them look pretty is hurtful. Besides, as the body-house has a sugar
factory of its own, you see it gets too much sugar when we eat many
sweet things.
HELEN: But where is the sugar factory, mother?
MOTHER: The liver, the largest worker in the house we live in, makes
a kind of sugar, as well as the bitter bile. How it is done I can not
tell, but it is true that in the hundreds of little rooms of which the
liver is made, all the sweet things we eat are changed to liver sugar
before they can be used in the body. The liver, also, makes starch into
sugar, I mean the starch found in bread, potatoes, and other foods. Now
if the fireman on an engine should shovel so much coal into his furnace
that it was filled full, what would happen?
ELMER: The furnace would be choked up so the fire would go out, or else
it would burn very slowly.
MOTHER: That is just what takes place in this wonderful sugar factory.
Since the liver makes sugar out of starch which is found in our foods,
if we swallow a big piece of cake, a lot of jam, some syrup, and some
candy, such treatment makes the liver cross. When all those little,
living kettles are full of sugar already, how can they hold any more?
PERCY: How does the liver show it is cross, mother?
[Illustration: “_He has a sorry time._”]
MOTHER: It goes to work to punish the master of the house. It gives
him a nasty taste in his mouth, and he feels so sick that he thinks he
wants nothing to eat. Perhaps the liver sends word to the stomach that
it has “struck work,” and it will have nothing to do with such messes
as are sent it to work over. Then the stomach, not knowing what else to
do, sends all there is in it back upstairs out through the passage, and
the master of the house tells his friends who come to visit him, that
he is “bilious,” or that he has a “bilious attack,” and you may be sure
he has a sorry time. There may be a dreadful aching up in the cupola;
perhaps there is pain all over the house, all because the right kind of
food and the right amount were not sent in to build up the body. The
same thing is likely to happen if the master of the house sends a lot
of pastry, fat meat, and fried or greasy foods into the kitchen. Bile
is the one to care for them all, and he will bear such treatment awhile
without complaining; but when once his temper is up, he will not be
kind to anything the master may send him. Like other good servants, he
makes a bad master. Perhaps he will try to do some work in a lazy sort
of way; but he keeps grumbling all the time, till he makes the other
servants as cross as himself.
PERCY: I think I will try to keep Bile good-natured, and send the right
things and the right amount down to the sugar factory.
MOTHER: You may be sure you will not be happy unless you do; for,
though strange, yet ’tis true that when things go wrong in the stomach
and liver, it makes the master of the house very cross and unhappy.
Not long ago I visited a lady who has a pleasant home and all she could
wish to make her comfortable. I found her face gloomy, and she was
crying. She said she was not well; that a skin disease was troubling
her; that her children did not do right; and that she was very
miserable.
“I think it is my liver,” she added; “for when my blood is right and my
liver works well I am not troubled this way.”
Poor woman! She thought she was not a Christian, and she made herself
and her friends unhappy by her fault-finding. Her liver was to blame,
or rather she was to blame for giving it so much work to do that it
made her life hard, when it ought to have been most pleasant.
HELEN: But, mother, you make us feel as though we hardly ought to eat
at all, for fear of making somebody sour down-stairs.
MOTHER: Oh, no; I don’t want you to feel that way, but I wish you
to use these servants in your body-house so well that it will be a
pleasure to them to serve you! We should eat plenty of good, plain food
at proper times. We are made so we will get hungry and _want_ to eat;
and it is well that we do, or we might forget that fuel is needed in
the body. Not only should we eat proper kinds of food, but we should be
careful not to eat too much. You remember that Di-ges´tion must have
plenty of room in which to do her work, or she gets peevish and does
her task poorly.
AMY: How much should we eat in order not to eat too much?
MOTHER: Some persons need more food than others, and no one can tell
another just how much he should eat; but it is safe to say that we
should not put into the stomach all it will hold, nor eat just for the
pleasure of eating. In very cold countries people can eat more without
harm to themselves than they can in warmer climates. I once read of a
traveler in the frozen north who saw an Esquimau eat thirty-five pounds
of meat and several tallow candles in one day; but such a story seems
almost too big to be true, and we would certainly hardly feel able to
take such an amount of food in the same time. Children should have
plenty of good, simple food while they are growing.
ELMER: I think I will take a little food at a time, and take it often.
That’s the way the fireman feeds his engine.
MOTHER: That may do for an engine, but not for a stomach. It must have
rest as well as food. We should eat what we need, give the stomach time
to digest it, let it rest after it has finished its work, and then give
it more to do. One great cause of illness among people now is that they
eat too often and too much. Three meals a day at regular times are
enough, and the last should be a light one and taken early, to allow
the cooks time to do their work before the master goes to bed. Then all
will be quiet in the body-house, and the servants can rest after their
toil. If treated in this way, the morning will find them fresh and
ready for their duties.
HELEN: Should our food be cooked or eaten raw?
[Illustration: “_Lay the table in a neat, pleasing way._”]
MOTHER: I am glad you asked that question. Most kinds of foods are
better cooked, but many things are made unfit for food at all by being
badly cooked. To be able to prepare healthful food in a neat, tasteful
way is the best and most useful knowledge a girl can obtain. Every one
should know how to make good, light bread, how to prepare vegetables,
cook grains and fruits, and lay the table in a neat, pleasing way.
[Illustration: Quart pots of ale]
AMY: Will you teach us how, mother?
MOTHER: Certainly; we will begin this very day. I think we will form a
class of four; for the boys will wish to learn too. I am sure you will
soon be able to prepare food very nicely.
ELMER: Then we shall not always need to have a cook when we go out
camping, but we can do our own cooking and care for ourselves.
MOTHER: There is still one other thing that I wish you never to forget,
and that is that many men become drunkards because they do not have the
right kind of food. It may be it is made so hot with pepper, mustard,
and spices that it creates thirst, or it may be but half cooked, so
they feel poorly fed. Such men are much more apt to go to the bar-room
than the man who sits at a neatly-spread table furnished with plain,
healthful food.
PERCY: But isn’t alcohol a kind of food, mother? I have seen drinking
men who looked so fat and strong it seems as if it must build up the
body.
MOTHER: No, my son, it is a great mistake to think there is any food
in alcohol or in any drink that contains it. A noted doctor in England
says this about it: “There is more nourishment in the flour that can
be put on the point of a table knife than in eight quarts of the best
beer.”
ELMER: But why do people who drink beer look so fat, then?
MOTHER: It is true many who drink it increase in flesh, and so they
think the beer makes them large and strong. Fat men are not always
strong men. The alcohol in the beer changes the muscles of the body
into fat. It pushes the skin out and makes the face look round and
plump.
AMY: And red, too.
MOTHER: Yes; and all the time the man is growing weaker instead of
stronger. His liver changes into a mass of fat, and it crowds other
rooms of the body-house so they can not properly carry on their work.
The fleshy body of the beer-drinker is a diseased body, and you will
find that it does not have firm muscles, a strong heart, or a healthy
liver.
[Illustration: “_People who drink beer look fat._”]
PERCY: But you have not told us what we _should_ drink, mother.
Mother: Water, pure water, is the best drink for every one. Sometimes
people become very ill from drinking bad water, so care should be taken
to have it clean and pure. Bad water may be made harmless by boiling
it, and this should always be done if it is not known that it is
harmless. It may _look_ all right, and yet cause sickness and death.
The well should never be near a pig-sty, barn-yard, or other filthy
place. The seeds of sickness, which the doctors call “germs,” may
travel through the ground a long distance and so get into the water in
the well. This is more likely to be the case if the ground is sandy or
slopes toward the well.
ELMER: Wouldn’t it be better to drink tea or coffee than bad water?
MOTHER: Tea and coffee are not foods, and both contain poisons which
are hurtful to the body. It does not make bad water better to put
poison into it. Besides, these drinks are often taken with food, and
we have found that the cook down-stairs can do nothing while a lot of
liquid is pouring down over her. It is also true that hot drinks weaken
the walls of the stomach. It is better to drink pure water, and to take
it before eating or some time after, and then we shall not be tempted
to swallow our food without properly chewing it. Alcohol, tea, and
coffee are stimulants.
[Illustration: “_Water, pure water, is the best drink for every one._”]
HELEN: And I think you said once, mother, that a stimulant is like a
whip to a tired horse.
MOTHER: Yes; to stimulate means to prick, or goad, to excite, or rouse
to action. When a horse is very tired from climbing a steep hill his
driver strikes him with a whip. That _stimulates_ but it does not
strengthen him. At first it takes but one blow to make him go faster,
then two or three, and he finally becomes so weak that he does not
respond to the whip at all.
That is just what happens when a person uses tea, coffee, tobacco,
beer, or whisky. At first only a little will make him feel rested and
as though he were stronger. But soon he wants more, and does not feel
as strong as before he took the stimulant the first time. These drinks
stimulate, but do not give strength. When a horse is tired he does not
need a whip, but food and rest. The same is true of a man or woman when
tired. Instead of putting poison in the stomach they need good food and
rest, and these will make them really stronger.
[Illustration: _Giving him a stimulant._]
PERCY: I am glad that I know why all those things are called stimulants.
MOTHER: And I must tell you one more thing about the liver which will
help you understand what a wonderful part of the body-house it is, and
why we should treat it kindly. As you already know, it is the largest
room in the body. We might call it the store-room; for after the fuel
is ready to use, it is stored up in the liver, where it is kept till
needed, just as the tender carries a supply of coal for the engine.
We can not always be eating, and the body needs fuel when we are asleep
as well as when we are awake, so the liver stores it away and sends it
out when needed. Now if the master of the house sends a lot of alcohol
to his liver, at first the little rooms fill up with fat, so they can
not do their work or store up food for the body. If he keeps sending
more and more whisky to his liver, it finally becomes small and hard,
and when he goes to the doctor to find out what disease he has, the
wise man tells him he has “the drunkard’s liver.”
HELEN: What a pity it is that men should abuse the liver so!
MOTHER: Yes, it is a pity, but some women are as bad, though not as
many of them as of the men take alcohol. Some of them who would never
think of doing _that_, think that their liver is too big, and that it
makes the waist too large, so they gird it up with tight clothing and
do not give it room to work. One doctor found a woman who had squeezed
her waist so long that the liver was cut in two; and she died for her
folly.
When Liver finds his room growing smaller, he gets cross, and says,
“We’ll see about this;” and he gives the young lady a pain in her side.
Her skin begins to look yellow and dirty, and the silly girl goes to
the doctor for some medicine to make her well, when all she needs is
to give Liver room to do his work, and give her body the right kind of
fuel. Perhaps she is so foolish that she would rather be ill than let
her waist grow as large as God made it; and, if so, she and her friends
have a sorry time.
AMY: My liver shall never scold because it can’t have room enough in
which to work.
MOTHER: That’s like my sensible girl, and I wish every other in the
land would say the same.
HELEN: But, mother, I have heard girls say that their dresses were not
a bit tight, when I am almost sure they were.
MOTHER: The only safe way is not to wear corsets or tight bands at all,
and the clothing should be so loose that it will not compress the body
when one draws a deep, full breath.
PERCY: I should think there was enough sickness in the world without
people eating, drinking, and dressing to make themselves ill.
MOTHER: Many people do not know that it is what they do that makes
them ill. They think people _must_ be sick sometimes, and they do not
study to know how to care for themselves in such a way that they may
keep well. For this reason I wish you to learn how to care for the holy
temple of your body while you are children, and we must also do all we
can to help others by living right ourselves.
A PUMPING ENGINE
MOTHER: When we visited the water-works what did you admire most of all
the things you saw, Elmer?
ELMER: The great engines that kept pumping all the time and never
stopped to rest. How strange it seemed to think that they pump enough
water for all the people in this great city! The houses on the
hillsides as well as those on low ground have all they need.
MOTHER: But you would hardly think the house we live in has the most
wondrous little pumping engine you ever saw, would you? Day and night
it pumps “the river of life,” as the blood has been called, to every
part of the body. If it should once stop, we would die, and the
body-house could never be used again.
HELEN: Do you mean the heart, mother?
MOTHER: Yes. Can you tell me where your heart is?
AMY: I can. It is on my left side.
MOTHER: Not quite right, little girl. The lower point is felt on the
left side, it is true; but most of the heart is higher up and nearer
the center of your body. Who can tell how large it is?
PERCY: About the size of the fist of the person in whom it is found.
AMY: Then the baby’s heart is about as big as his dear little hand.
MOTHER: Can you describe its shape?
HELEN: I think it is something like that of a pear or a strawberry,
with the small end down.
[Illustration: _The heart._]
MOTHER: Here is a picture that will help us in learning its shape. I
think I have not yet told you that the trunk of the body is divided
into two large rooms. There is a partition running crosswise, called
the di´a-phragm (di´a-fram). This gives us a large upper room, where
we find the engine and bath room. The kitchen, eating room, store
room, and waste rooms are in the lower part of the trunk, below the
di´a-phragm. But we want to talk about the heart now. We have found
about how large it is and what it is shaped like; let us next take a
peep inside and learn, if we can, how it does its work.
ELMER: Didn’t you tell us once that the heart was made of muscles?
MOTHER: Yes; the outside walls are made of little strong muscles, and
the inside is hollow. It is divided into four rooms. Each has its own
name, but we will not try to learn them now. There is a wall reaching
from top to bottom, and as it has no door, nothing can pass through
from one side to the other. Then there are cross walls, or partitions,
with folding doors in them, so there is an up-stairs and down-stairs
room on each side. There are big pipes, or tubes, leading in or out
from each room. They are called veins, or ar´ter-ies. The veins carry
the blood _to_ the heart, while the arteries carry it _away_.
HELEN: But, mother, what makes the heart beat?
MOTHER: I thought that would be about the first thing you would wish to
know, and I will explain the best I can. When the muscles which make up
the heart draw together, the rooms inside become small, and the blood
in them is squeezed out. When the muscles slacken, the rooms become
larger, and the blood rushes in and fills them again. So the blood
keeps coming in and going out of the heart all the time, and it causes
it to make the movement which we call beating.
AMY: How fast does it beat?
MOTHER: In very little children it beats from one hundred and twenty to
one hundred and forty times a minute. In grown people it beats sixty
or seventy times, and when the body-house has grown old and feeble, it
beats slower still. Percy, you may run up and down stairs and then tell
us if you see any difference in your heart-beats.
PERCY: I believe they are twice as many as they were when I was sitting
still.
MOTHER: Hardly as many as that, but the heart beats much more quickly.
Can you think of anything else that makes the action of the heart
faster?
HELEN: When I was frightened this morning I could hear my heart go
thump, thump, and I am sure it seemed to be in a hurry.
MOTHER: Yes; moving quickly, fright, anger, or joy makes this busy pump
work more quickly. Sadness and grief cause it to work slowly. It beats
faster when we are standing than when we sit still, and the motion is
slower when we lie down than when we are sitting.
ELMER: Why did the doctor put his finger on my wrist when I was sick,
mother?
MOTHER: He wanted to know how your heart was working, so he felt your
pulse. Sometimes when people are ill it beats very, very fast, and
sometimes it moves more slowly than it should.