Before laying down a simple programme which will give one a common sense
method of keeping well, living long, and making the very most of life,
it may be well to study some of the innumerable theories regarding long
life.
If all the discussions upon health and long life, from the earliest time
to the present, could be adequately chronicled they would form an
interesting, if not an amusing history. In many of these, however, we
should find the same serious thoughts which we may well consider and
find by comparison a few points in which all agree as to what is
necessary to health, happiness and length of days. Note the theories
that have been seriously advocated and which have had vogue among
certain classes for a time,--such as the use of cold water every day as
a remedy for all diseases. The cold water cure advocated wet sheet packs
for fevers, and water, in some form, for all ailments. To live long some
physicians have advised sleeping on the right side, others have
advocated the use of raw food or food that has been cooked very
slightly. Some have contended that scientific food is the complete food
found in Nature, such as nuts; still others have advocated whole wheat
bread!
In our own time a method has been emphasized which has been called
"Fletcherizing." This, of course, is taken from the name of the
gentleman, who has made it so illustrious by his books and his
discussions of the subject. Mr. Fletcher's principle consists in holding
or masticating the food until it is in a fluid form; even a liquid must
be held in the mouth until it is of the same temperature as that of the
body.
Many consider that the chief advantage of Fletcherizing is that it makes
a person eat less. This may be a part of the advantage.
I once had the honor of sitting at dinner by the side of Mr. Fletcher
and observed his methods. He did not eat more than one-third of the
amount, for example, of ice-cream that the rest ate, but he stopped when
the others did, and said, with a smile:--"I have had enough; what I have
eaten will give me more nourishment than a larger amount would and it
will not give me any trouble."
There is great truth in some of these theories. We should eat less meat
and more grain. We should not bolt the best food elements out of wheat;
we should not bleach rice and take out its nutritious element.
Certainly, our lives are very unscientific. Most men live merely by
accident. The shortness of life is not surprising to one who understands
how irrationally most of us live.
Others say, breathe deeply, naturally and constantly.
Still others have urged active life out of doors or an active
participation in business. It is a well-known fact that many men have
not lived long after retiring from their occupations.
Andrew Carnegie said recently that he attributed his long life, health
and strength to his activity. The story is told that he walked the floor
of his room with deep anxiety and consternation the night after his
offer was accepted to sell the Carnegie Steel Works. He had not thought
it possible that his price would be accepted, and he kept speaking to
his old friend about the amount of money paid and the greatness of the
responsibility. Fortunately he did not retire, as most men do, but took
an interest in every phase of modern life. He has used his money, as a
sacred trust, according to his own best judgment, building libraries and
giving organs, pensioning teachers who have given their lives for truth
rather than for making money, and has furthered many other causes.
One of the most common opinions is that long life depends upon "our
constitution,"--upon what we receive from our ancestors. That is, long
life is a gift, not an attainment. And we are in the habit of blaming
our ancestors, near and remote, for our lack of strength and vitality.
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once made the remark that if one wished to
live a long life he should be afflicted with some incurable disease.
This was thought to be merely a joke, but it has foundation in fact.
Many men with poor constitutions live to a very advanced age. They study
themselves and live simply. They realize that they are not strong and
they do not indulge themselves, but reach out for health and strength in
all ways.
Among all the practices which men have adopted through different ages
for prolonging life we find many which are universally believed, though
possibly not practiced. Some discussion of these may give us courage and
enable us to realize how unscientifically, how carelessly, most men
live, and how indifferent we really are to our well-being.
And yet we find wide-spread doubt as to the advisability of being too
fastidious. Some of the extravagant ideas have naturally given rise to
such scepticism.
On hardly any subject have men had such extreme views as they have
regarding health or the prolongation of their own lives.
I know one lady who ate a raw carrot every morning because it was
yellow, and, as yellow is a spiritual color, this practice, it was
advocated, would free one from materiality and, consequently, from all
disease.
I have known others who condemned all attention to proper food,
exercise, and even to expression, because such attention would lead to
faith in material means.
Webster said, "Truth is always congruous, and agrees with itself; every
truth in the universe agrees with every other truth in the universe;
whereas falsehoods not only disagree with truth but usually quarrel
among themselves."
In accordance with this principle as a rule the untruthfulness of any
view is seen in its failure to recognize anything else as true.
No one will advocate any extreme and irrational habit. Too much
attention to food, too much attention to the care of the body and
exercise will degrade even character. The morning exercises which are
here recommended should be taken even as one washes his hands, as a
matter of course. Man is spiritual, and character is developed
spiritually, and mere attention to the body does not secure health and
strength.
There is a great and easily demonstrated truth in the fact that people
who believe in a spiritual life have endured untold hardships and have
faced all kinds of conditions without injury. The power of mind over
body, of spirit over matter, is too well attested to be doubted.
However, man is slow and progress must be made gradually. The first step
must be taken before the last can be taken. Extravagant and wrong views
prevent a great many people from doing anything.
If we examine all the rules for securing health and the leading secrets
of long life, we find that one of the earliest is temperance.
A noted instance is Socrates. During the great plague, when at least
one-third of the population of Athens died, Socrates went about with
impunity. This was no doubt due to the cheerfulness and temperance of
his life. We know of his cheerfulness from accounts by Zenophon and
Plato.
Possibly the most illustrious example, which has been recounted of the
preservation of health and the prolonging of life through temperance, is
Luigi Cornaro, who was born in Venice in 1464. After having, according
to Gamba, wasted his youth, his health was so broken and his habits so
fixed that "upon passing the age of thirty-five he had nothing left to
hope for but that he might end in death the suffering of a worn-out
life."
This man, by resolution and temperance, battled with his perverted
habits and became strong and vigorous and happy, and lived to be over
one hundred years of age. "The good old man," said Graziani, "feeling
that he drew near the end, did not look upon the great transit with
fear, but as though he were about to pass from one house into another.
He was seated in his little bed--he used a small and very narrow
one--and, at its side, was his wife, Veronica, almost his equal in
years. In a clear and sonorous voice he told me why he would be able to
leave this life with a valiant soul.... Feeling a little later the
failure of vital force, he exclaimed, 'Glad and full of hope will I go
with you, my good God!' He then composed himself; and having closed his
eyes, as though about to sleep, with a slight sigh, he left us forever."
A new edition of Cornaro's discourses on the temperate life, by William
F. Butler of Milwaukee, has recently been issued under the title of "The
Art of Living Long." The first of these discourses was written at the
age of eighty-three, the second at eighty-six, the third at ninety-one,
and the fourth at ninety-five. His treatises have been popular for all
these centuries.
He held that the older a man grows the wiser he becomes and the more he
knows; and if he will, by temperance and regularity of life and
exercise, preserve his strength, his powers of enjoyment will grow, as
his own did, every year until the end.
"Men are, as a rule," says Cornaro, "very sensual and intemperate, and
wish to gratify their appetites and give themselves up to the commission
of innumerable disorders. When, seeing that they cannot escape suffering
the unavoidable consequences of such intemperance as often as they are
guilty of it, they say--by way of excuse--that it is preferable to live
ten years less and to enjoy life. They do not pause to consider what
immense importance ten years more of life, and especially of healthy
life, possess when we have reached mature age, the time, indeed, at
which men appear to the best advantage in learning and virtue--two
things which can never reach their perfection except with time. To
mention nothing else at present, I shall only say that, in literature
and in the sciences, the majority of the best and most celebrated works
we possess were written when their authors had attained ripe age, and
during these same ten latter years for which some men, in order that
they may gratify their appetites, say they do not care."
We see not only in this passage but in many other places evidence of the
fact that Cornaro lived a cheerful, contented life. The reform was
evidently not merely in his eating and drinking but fully as much in the
inner thought of his life. This is shown in many passages from his
discourses.
He says: "Although reason should convince them that this is the case,
yet these men refuse to admit it, and pursue their usual life of
disorder as heretofore. Were they to act differently, abandoning their
irregular habits and adopting orderly and temperate ones, they would
live to old age--as I have--in good condition. Being, by the grace of
God, of so robust and perfect a constitution, they would live until they
reached the age of a hundred and twenty, as history points out to us
that others--born, of course, with perfect constitutions--have done, who
led the temperate life.
"I am certain I, too, should live to that age had it been my good
fortune to receive a similar blessing at my birth; but, because I was
born with a poor constitution, I fear I shall not live much beyond a
hundred years."
According to the census of the United States not one man in twenty
thousand attains the age of one hundred years. If we figure out
carefully from these statistics, we find the average is only about
one-third of this period of life.
One of the social customs is that we must eat an extraordinary
meal,--far more than we need, as if life's enjoyment depended on the low
sense of taste,--as if every contract or matter of important business
must have this as an introduction. Theoretically speaking, many people
believe in low living and high thinking, but it is very rare that we
find one who practices it.
The two simple rules of Cornaro deserve our attention: to eat only what
he wanted, that is, what he actually needed for the sustenance of his
body, and to eat only those things which really agreed with him, that
is, those which were really helpful to the sustenance of his life. If we
should consider eating merely as a means and not an end, Cornaro's idea
that the normal age of a human being was one hundred and twenty years
would not be such a wild dream.
Another almost universally recognized requisite is exercise in the open
air, or regular, systematic, simple and vigorous activity of some kind.
The necessity of thoroughly pure air must be emphasized from first to
last. Some think that the dullness felt by many people in the early
morning is due to the impure air of cities, and to the failure to open
windows. A lady once said to me, "When I am in the country I always
sleep out of doors. Then I have not the slightest disinclination to get
up. I do it as naturally and as gladly as the animals."
It is to be hoped that the rapid transit and the automobile will enable
people to live farther out in the country, farther from air poisoned by
smoke and gases. Even in cities, however, one may have open windows and
greater circulation of air than is common.
Some have gone so far as to place exercise over against temperance in
eating, saying that if you take enough exercise you may eat and drink
what you please. While there is some truth in this there is really no
antagonism between them; in fact, they are usually found together.
Another view almost universally advocated, is to avoid drugs. The
importance of this and its union with right exercise have been
demonstrated in the impressive language of fable.
"There is a story in the 'Arabian Nights' Tales'," says Addison, "of a
king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken
abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a
physician cured him by the following method: he took a hollow ball of
wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so
carefully that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mallet, and, after
having hollowed the handle and that part which strikes the ball, he
inclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball
itself. He then ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise
himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments,
till such time as he should sweat; when, as the story goes, the virtue
of the medicaments perspiring through the wood, had so good an influence
on the sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition
which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not been able to
remove.
"This Eastern allegory is finely contrived to show us how beneficial
bodily labor is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual
physic."