THE HEALTH OF THE FAMILY.
"Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words--health, peace, and competence.
But Health consists with temperance alone,
And Peace, O Virtue, peace is all thy own."--_Pope._
"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught."--_Dryden._
An eminent physician gave four rules for the preservation of
health. When he died, his books were sold; one, which was said to
contain very valuable precepts of health, but which the bidders
were not permitted to open, sold at a high price. When the
purchaser got it home he hastily proceeded to examine it, and was
much disappointed at finding that it contained nothing more than
four simple rules. He thought he had thrown his money away. But
on further consideration he was induced to put the rules in
practice; by doing so he was restored to a state of health to
which he had long been a stranger. He often spoke of the old
physician's book as the cheapest and most valuable purchase he
ever made in his life. The rules were these: _Keep the head cool;
Keep the feet warm; Take a light supper; Rise early._
The old word for "holy" in the German language also means "healthy,"
and, in our own, "hale," "whole," and "holy" are from the same root.
Carlyle says that "you could not get any better definition of what
'holy' really is than 'healthy--completely healthy.'" _Mens sana in
corpore sano._ There is no kind of achievement you could make in the
world that is equal to perfect health. What are nuggets and millions?
The French financier said, "Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?"
Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.
What boots it to have attained wealth, if the wealth is accompanied by
ceaseless ailments? What is the worth of distinction, if it has brought
hypochondria with it? Surely no one needs telling that a good digestion,
a bounding pulse, and high spirits, are elements of happiness which no
external advantages can out-balance. Chronic bodily disorder casts a
gloom over the brightest prospects; while the vivacity of strong health
gilds even misfortune. Health is not merely freedom from bodily pain; it
is the capability of receiving pleasure from all surrounding things, and
from the employment of all our faculties. It need scarcely be said that
without this capability even marriage cannot make us happy. Indeed,
without a fair share of health to start with people are not justified in
taking upon themselves the responsibilities of matrimony, and running
the risk of introducing into the world weak children that may be said to
be damned rather than born into it.
It has been remarked that the first requisite to success in life is to
be a good animal. Will it seem shockingly unpoetical to suggest that
this is also a very important element of success in marriage? Certainly
beauty has great power in retaining as well as in gaining affection, and
health is a condition of beauty. A clear complexion and laughing eyes, a
supple and rounded form, and a face unmarked by wrinkles of pain or
peevishness, are the results of vigour of constitution.
Overflowing health produces good humour, and we all know how important
that is to matrimonial felicity. I once knew an old lady who used to say
that it was a duty to sometimes take medicine for the sake of one's
friends. She was thinking of the effect of dyspepsia, congested liver,
and other forms of ill-health upon our tempers. The chief misery of
dyspepsia is that it is not merely pain, but pain which affects the
intellect and feelings alike; in Carlyle's vivid words: "Every window of
your feeling, even of your intellect, as it were, begrimed and
mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole drug-shop in
your inwards; the foredone soul drowning slowly in the quagmires of
disgust."
Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a man in the clothing business with an
impressible temperament who let a customer "slip through his fingers one
day without fitting him with a new garment. 'Ah!' said he to a friend of
mine, who was standing by, 'if it hadn't been for that confounded
headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a coat on that man, in spite
of himself, before he left the store.' A passing throb only; but it
deranged the nice mechanism required to persuade the accidental human
being, _x_, into a given piece of broadcloth, _a_."
How many more happy days would a husband and wife spend together were it
not for confounded headaches which cause foolish, bitter words to be
spoken. If a man cannot do business when the nice mechanism of his body
is deranged, neither can he be gentle and kind in the family circle.
This is what Dr. Johnson meant when he said that a man is a villain when
sick.
"Smelfungus," says Sterne, "had been the grand tour, and had seen
nothing to admire; all was barren from Dan to Beersheba; and when I met
him he fell foul of the Venus de Medici; and abused her ladyship like a
common fish-fag. 'I will tell it,' cried he, 'I will tell it to the
world!' 'You had better,' said Sterne, 'tell it to your physician.'" So
too when a man falls foul of his wife, and abuses her ladyship like a
common fish-fag because his liver is out of order, he had better go to a
physician and take every means of clearing his clouded temper.
How much a husband can do by sympathy and kindness for a sick wife! Mrs.
Carlyle used to say, "The very least attention from Carlyle just
glorifies me. When I have one of my headaches, and the sensation of
red-hot knitting-needles darting into my brain, Carlyle's way of
expressing sympathy is to rest a heavy hand on the top of my head, and
keep it there in perfect silence for several seconds, so that although I
could scream with nervous agony, I sit like a martyr, smiling with joy
at such a proof of profound pity from him." The truth is that happiness
is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the
blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends
alike to increase health when it exists, and to restore it when it has
been lost.
If acts of kindness from a husband are necessary in all cases, they are
especially so in cases of his wife's illness, from whatever cause
arising, and most of all when there is a prospect of her becoming a
mother. This is the time for him to show care, watchful tenderness,
attention to all her wishes, and anxious efforts to quiet her fears. Any
agitation or fatigue at such times may cause the remaining years of her
life to be years of pain and weakness. If he value happiness in married
life and would escape bitter self-reproach, the husband will be very
careful of his wife when in this condition. And it is the duty of the
young wife, on her part, to take care of her own health, because of the
manner in which hers will affect the health of her expected child. And
as the moral and mental nature of the child is scarcely less dependent
on her than the physical, she should cherish only such mental frames and
dispositions as she would like to see reproduced in her child. How much
her husband can help or hinder her in doing so! Then when the child is
born she ought if possible to give it the food which nature provides and
which is its birthright. No other is so congenial, and the consequences
of unnatural methods of feeding are sometimes most injurious to the
bodies and minds of children.
In these hard times of great competition in every kind of business, it
is a sad fact that many men have to overwork themselves, or at least
fancy they have, in order to get a living for their families. But there
are others who kill themselves by overwork and over-anxiety, for what?
To amass more money than they can well spend, or to catch the
soap-bubble called fame--
"And all to leave what with his tact he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son."
Alas! that such men never think of His considerate words to His
disciples who was the great Physician of the body as well as of the
soul--"Come ye apart, and rest awhile." If they did they would be able
to show to their friends at home what the Lord had done for them. Rest
to their overstrung nerves would make them less peevish, discontented,
and generally disagreeable.
More open-air amusements, and more indoor gaiety, would save a great
many failing brains and enfeebled hearts.
Of course health may be impaired quite as much by doing too little work
as by doing too much. This truth was enforced by Thackeray, when,
addressing a medical friend, he exclaimed, "Doctor, there is not in the
whole of your pharmacopoeia so sovereign a remedy as hard work." All
depends upon the temperament and constitution. What kills one man cures
another. General Sir Charles Napier, who was not physically a strong
man, declared that for the first time he had discovered what total
immunity from "malaise" meant when he took to working seventeen hours a
day at Cephalonia, as acting Governor or Commissioner of the Ionian
Islands.
Not all but by far the largest part of the cure of nervous depression
rests with the patient. Change, exercise, fresh air, diet, tonics--all
these together will not cure any one who gives up and gives way.
Above all, we should try to be cheerful. A clerical friend, at a
celebrated watering-place, met a lady who seemed hovering on the brink
of the grave. Her cheeks were hollow and wan, her manner listless, her
step languid, and her brow wore the severe contraction so indicative
both of mental and physical suffering, so that she was to all observers
an object of sincere pity. Some years afterward he encountered this same
lady; but so bright, and fresh, and youthful, so full of healthful
buoyancy, and so joyous in expression, that he questioned the lady if he
had not deceived himself with regard to identity. "Is it possible,"
said he, "that I see before me Mrs. B. who presented such a doleful
appearance at the Springs several years ago?" "The very same." "And pray
tell me the secret of your cure. What means did you use to attain to
such vigour of mind and body, to such cheerfulness and rejuvenation?" "A
very simple remedy," returned she, with a beaming face; "I stopped
worrying and began to laugh; that was all."
We would call the attention of heads of families to the following
mistakes which the "Sanitary Record" lately enumerated: "It is a mistake
to labour when you are not in a fit condition to do so. To think that
the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become. To go
to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour
taken from sleep is an hour gained. To imagine that if a little work or
exercise is good, violent or prolonged exercise is better. To conclude
that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in. To eat
as if you only had a minute to finish the meal in, or to eat without an
appetite, or continue after it has been satisfied, merely to satisfy the
taste. To believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and
that the more hours they study the more they learn. To imagine that
whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic
stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects.
To take off proper clothing out of season because you have become
heated. To sleep exposed to a direct draught in any season. To think
that any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases
flesh is heir to."
There are few things more important to health than the due adjustment of
play and work. The school at which a boy ten years of age is made to
work at his tasks for the same time as a lad of sixteen ought to be
avoided by all parents. If health is to be preserved in early youth, the
child must be treated on the same principle as a foal would be. He, or
she, must be allowed to a great extent to "run wild," and "lessons" must
be carefully graduated to the bodily powers.
Those mothers who are inclined to dose their children too much should be
reminded that it was during the days when physic flourished in the
nursery that the greatest amount of disease was found. It is not by
medicine, but by acting in accordance with natural laws, that health of
body and health of mind and morals can be secured at home. Without a
knowledge of such laws, the mother's love too often finds its recompense
only in the child's coffin.
In the management of their children's health some mothers are guided by
everybody and everything except by nature herself. And yet the child's
healthy instincts are what alone should be followed.
Sir Samuel Garth, physician to George I., was a member of the Kit-Kat
Club. Coming to the club one night, he said he must soon be gone, having
many patients to attend; but some good wine being produced, he forgot
them. Sir Richard Steele was of the party, and reminded him of the
visits he had to pay. Garth pulled out his list, which amounted to
fifteen, and said, "It's no great matter whether I see them to-night or
not; for nine of them have such bad constitutions that all the
physicians in the world can't save them; and the other six have such
good constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't kill
them."
Probably the carelessness of many people about their health may be
explained in the same way. They think either that their constitutions
are so good that nothing can injure them or else that they are so bad
that nothing can make them better. And often it is a bottle of wine or
some other indulgence of appetite that keeps health away. We have heard
of a well-known character who, having had many severe attacks of gout,
and who, getting into years, and having a cellar of old port wine, upon
which he drew somewhat considerably, was advised by his physician to
give up the port, and for the future to drink a certain thin claret not
very expensive. Said the gentleman in reply to this suggestion: "I
prefer my gout with my port, to being cured of my gout with that claret
of yours!" Of a delicate man who would not control his appetite it was
said, "One of his passions which he will not resist is for a particular
dish, pungent, savoury, and multifarious, which sends him almost every
night into Tartarus." Talking of the bad effects of late hours Sydney
Smith said of a distinguished diner-out that it would be written on his
tomb, "He dined late." "And died early," added Luttrell.
Such people ought to be told that in playing tricks with their health
they are committing a very great sin. "Perhaps," says Mr. Herbert
Spencer, "nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will
both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the
preservation of health is a _duty_. Few seem conscious that there is
such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply
the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please.
Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard
simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less
flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents,
and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime;
yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true
that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily
transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that, if this
bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression.
The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are _physical
sins_."
Certainly there are many great sufferers who are not responsible for
their ailments, and sometimes they teach lessons of patience and
resignation so well in the world and in their families, that their work
is quite as valuable as that of the active and healthy. Robert Hall,
being troubled with an acute disease which sometimes caused him to roll
on the floor with agony, would rise therefrom, wiping from his brow the
drops of sweat which the pain had caused, and, trembling from the
conflict, ask, "But I did not complain--I did not cry out much, did I?"
Sydney Smith may have dined out more than was good for his health, but
he never allowed infirmities to sour his temper. At the end of a letter
to an old friend he adds playfully, "I have gout, asthma, and seven
other maladies, but am otherwise very well." For the sake of domestic
happiness let us preserve our health; but when we do get ill we should
endeavour to bear it in this cheerful spirit.