and which they transform into materials which go to make up the living
tissues of all things. The place of breathing in the process of life is
manifold. But its primary function is to make available for the body’s
uses the sunlight, or energy, which is stored up in the food we eat.
It does this by means of the oxygen which it contains, and the purpose
of breathing is to obtain from the air an adequate supply of oxygen.
Oxygen is one of the essential materials required for the support of
life. Without oxygen the whole life process would come to an end. From
every breath that is taken into the body, about one and a quarter cubic
inches of oxygen must be obtained by the body, to keep up the fire of
life within us. You cannot burn a match, or your reading lamp in the
evening, unless there is an adequate supply of oxygen; and even so does
the body require this indispensable and all powerful element in order
to maintain itself.
[Illustration: FRESH AIR IN BERMUDA]
We have noted the fact that of the myriads upon myriads of swarming
cells which the blood contains, a large proportion are the
oxygen-conveyers. When you take air into your lungs, these cells absorb
the precious element, and rush with it to all parts of the body. After
distributing the oxygen wherever it is needed, they pick up for the
return journey to the lungs all manner of débris and gases—the poisons
which are produced by the organs of the body as they carry on their
work. As Metchnikoff has shown us, it is the accumulation of poisons
produced by the activity of our various organs which, unless properly
disposed of, or kept below excessive quantities, bring about premature
old age, the majority of all diseases, and early death. The amount
of poisons which the average person throws off from the body with a
single breath, as has been shown by delicate laboratory experiments, is
enough to contaminate and render unfit for breathing three cubic feet
or three-quarters of a barrel of air. Assuming an average of twenty
breaths per minute, which is the normal rate for breathing for adults,
the amount of air each person contaminates per minute will be sixty
cubic feet, or one cubic foot a second.
If you hold your breath for a minute, you will be conscious of an
extremely unpleasant feeling, which is the way in which the body
manifests its urgent need for oxygen. The need of ventilation is not
merely the need of oxygen, however. There may be plenty of oxygen in
the air of a room which has been closed for some time, and which has
been breathed in and out of the lungs of the people in the room; the
trouble is that this oxygen is unfit for breathing, being full of
impurities thrown off by the bodies of these people.
HOW TO CALCULATE ROOM VENTILATION
Dr. Kellogg has supplied some exceedingly useful calculations of the
degree of ventilation needed in rooms of various sizes. “Every one,”
he says, “should become intelligent in relation to the matter of
ventilation, and should appreciate its importance. Vast and sometimes
irreparable injury frequently results from the confinement of several
scores or hundreds of people in a school room, church or lecture room,
without adequate means of removing the impurities thrown off from their
lungs and bodies. The same air being breathed over and over becomes
intensely charged with poisons which render the blood impure, lessen
resistance and induce susceptibility to taking cold and to infection
with germs of pneumonia, consumption and other infectious diseases
which are always present in a very crowded audience room.
“Suppose, for example, a thousand persons are seated in a room forty
feet in width, sixty in length, and fifteen in height; how long a
time would elapse before the air of such a room would become unfit
for further respiration? Remembering that each person spoils one foot
of air every second, it is clear that one thousand cubic feet of air
will be contaminated for every second that the room is occupied. To
ascertain the number of seconds which would elapse before the entire
air contained in the room will be contaminated, so that it is unfit
for further breathing, we have only to divide the cubic contents of
the room by one thousand. Multiplying, we have 60 × 40 × 15 equals
36,000, the number of cubic feet. This, divided by one thousand, gives
thirty-six as the number of seconds. Thus it appears that with closed
doors and windows breath poisoning of the audience would begin at the
end of thirty-six seconds, or less than one minute. The condition of
the air in such a room at the end of an hour cannot be adequately
pictured in words, and yet hundreds of audiences are daily subjected
to just such inhumane treatment through the ignorance or stupidity of
architects, or the carelessness of janitors, or the criminal negligence
of both.”
TUBERCULOSIS POINTS THE MORAL
No circumstance has been more successful in impressing the great
importance of fresh air and adequate ventilation upon the public mind
than the success which has attended the open air cure for consumption.
This is a mode of treatment of comparatively recent adoption in
America, but it is by this time generally recognized as really the
only possible cure for tuberculosis. The mortality from this disease
is greater than any except pneumonia; another disease that proper
breathing habits will do much to avert. In America one person in every
nine dies of tuberculosis; and of the deaths which occur between the
ages of fifteen and thirty-five, one-third are due to the great white
plague. We give these figures on the authority of Professor Irving
Fisher of Yale, who is Secretary of the New Haven AntiTuberculosis
Association. His interest in this disease is that of one who has had
it, and who has cured it by the open air treatment. Of the authors of
this book, one has had an experience similar to Professor Fisher. There
is nothing academic about this insistence on the need of fresh air and
proper breathing habits; literally, and in the fullest degree, it is a
question of life and death whether you shall breathe properly, and have
good air to breathe, or whether you shall not.
HOW BREATHING AIDS THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD
To return for a moment to the processes of breathing, we find that
the act of inflating the lungs is a blood-pumping process as well.
This blood-pumping process has a great effect upon the struggle of the
white soldiers of the blood to maintain the body against the inroads
of disease. Each time that the wall of the chest is elevated after the
lungs have been emptied, a suction force is exerted upon the large
veins which enter the chest, especially those which come in through
the abdominal cavity. “At the same moment,” to quote Dr. Kellogg again,
“the downward pressure of the diaphragm by which the liver, stomach,
and other abdominal organs are compressed against the muscular walls
of the abdomen, serves to force the blood from below upward, emptying
the venous blood of the abdominal cavity into the chest, thus helping
it toward the heart. The more tense and well developed the muscles of
the abdominal wall and the stronger the muscles of respiration, the
stronger will be this upward movement of the blood. When the abdominal
muscles are weakened by improper dress, by corsets, tight lacing, or by
wearing of belts or bands or by sedentary habits, especially sitting in
a stooped position, the weakened muscles yield to the downward pressure
of the diaphragm, thus neutralizing to a large degree the beneficial
influence of this action. This condition is unquestionably a cause of
chronic disease of the liver and stomach, inactive bowels, and possibly
lays the foundation of cirrhosis of the liver, spleen, and other grave
disorders of the abdominal region.”
It is very obvious how deep breathing will thus influence the vigor
of the blood’s army of cells. Deep breathing forces the blood to rush
into the lungs, there to be charged with oxygen. Without this oxygen
the white cells die. Vigorous breathing also directly aids digestion,
and promotes the absorption of food materials. Those who have slow
digestion will find that breathing exercises will be of especial
benefit. In ordinary breathing of a quiet person, the movements of the
chest are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, but when vigorous
breathing is indulged in, the diaphragm as it moves up and down
kneads the stomach and its contents and, very materially, assists the
digestive organs.
HAVE FRESH AIR AT NIGHT
During sleeping hours the breathing movements are slighter and slower
than when one is awake and active. It is necessary that the activity
of the body should be lessened in order that rest may be secured;
and yet the work of the liver, kidneys, and other organs which are
engaged in throwing off poisons goes on continually; as does also the
repairing work of the living cells, which are forever building up the
parts of the body broken down by work or sickness. For some six to nine
hours the body is thus occupied in resting and repairing itself, in
order that on the next day it may respond like a living machine to the
demand of the conscious mind. We should do all in our power to help on
this recuperative process; and no way will be more effective than to
sleep, out of doors, or with the head at a window, or at least in a
well-ventilated room.
There are a great number of breathing exercises described in various
books on the subject, but the best breathing exercise is natural
breathing. If the head is kept erect, and the shoulders low so that
the chest is upright; if breathing is carried on through the nostrils,
and the habit of deep breathing carefully cultivated—there will be no
need for special exercises, save in the case of invalids. The most
effective of all breathing exercises is to run or walk rapidly, or walk
up a hill, or up stairs, if these be in the open air, with the head
well back. This exercise heightens the action of the lungs, and all
parts of the body are flooded with fresh air.
HOW EXERCISE AIDS THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD
The question of breathing properly is intimately bound up with the
question of exercise. The best of all exercise is play. All games
in the open air which a person takes part in for the love of them
far surpass the cleverest and most scientific sets of rules which
physiologists have ever evolved. Unconscious performance of all the
functions of the body is the ideal of hygiene. Exercise aids the
battle of life within us in a direct manner. Exercise breaks down worn
out tissue, making room for new and healthy tissue. It increases the
rate of oxidation or burning up of fuel within us, and this in its
turn enables the body to get rid of waste of material. Exercise also
increases the strength and endurance of the muscles and fibres.
When muscles become weak, they relax and allow various portions of the
body to drop into positions which are not only ungraceful, but are
decidedly injurious. When the muscles are not used and become flabby,
the shoulders get rounded and drop forward through the weakness of the
muscles which are intended to hold them back in position. The ribs
which form the framework of the chest not being properly sustained by
the muscles attached to them, gradually fall inward, thus flattening
the chest, and compressing the lungs. There is a very close connection
between gracefulness of carriage and sound bodily health.
The person who lounges, or slouches, be it ever so picturesquely, does
so at the expense of the body. Proper exercise will prevent these
physical defects, and will remedy them in most persons who have not yet
attained middle age. Even in advanced years, say the physiologists,
much may be done to correct these physical deformities by properly
directed and systematic exercises.
EXERCISES MAKE NEW BLOOD
Exercise has another most important task in supplying an adequate
amount of blood to the bones of the body, in order that these bones may
carry on their work of manufacturing fresh blood for the use of the
body. Unless these bones are bathed with the already existing blood of
the body, which carries to them oxygen and nourishment, the process of
manufacturing new blood, which goes on within the marrow of the bones,
would quickly cease. It has been demonstrated by science that muscular
activity increases the blood flow through the muscles as many as six
times.
Here, then, lies perhaps the first hope for supplying new blood to any
body which has begun to deteriorate through the accumulation of poisons
emanating from the large intestine, or from the other organs. Exercise
will supply the blood-producing bone marrow with six times as much raw
material to make new blood as a sedentary mode of life would produce,
and at the same time this six-times-strengthened flood will wash out
of the crevices of the bones and muscles and fibres the stored up
poisons. For these purposes, the exercises which move the large muscle
masses are the most helpful. Dr. Benton A. Colver, of the Battle Creek
Sanitarium, to whom we are indebted for assistance in preparing this
chapter, names the following exercises as being beneficial for this
purpose:
Low knee bending, stretching and heel sinking, and heel raising; lying
on the floor with the weight supported by toes and hands, and lowering
and raising the body; raising the body by the arms, holding to a
bar above the head; walking with a vigorous stride, and running and
swimming.
Of all these exercises, swimming is theoretically the best, for the
reason that it exercises equally all the muscle masses in the body,
and requires the best balanced of all movements. Walking and running
come next in the order of excellence, simply for the reason that they
can be carried on best in the open air and without the bother that may
accompany the performance of more formal exercises.
EXERCISES WHICH RETARD AUTO-INTOXICATION
Another way in which exercise directly helps the battle of the blood
within us, is by assisting such organs of body-poison elimination as
the spleen, the liver, and the portal system of veins. It is in these
organs that the exhausted blood is broken up and cast off. The blood in
these organs is loaded with broken down tissue and other waste material
from the body, and is contaminated with gases and poisons. In the
body of the person who leads a sedentary life a great volume of blood
settles in these organs and is prematurely put out of use.
Proper exercises will empty this great tank of stagnant blood as easily
as a sponge is emptied by the pressure of the hand. This passive blood,
having access to all the organs of digestion, is largely responsible
for the supply of inferior digestive juices, and thus is a leading
factor in indigestion, loss of appetite, and such diseases as catarrh
of the stomach and bowels. If, however, this blood is pumped on as it
should be to the heart and lungs, there to be cleansed, the fresh blood
rushes in to fill its place, armed by the activity of the lungs with
its life-giving ammunition of oxygen.
By persistently keeping up this emptying and filling of the portal
veins, and of the spleen and liver, the old cinders left from the
oxidation of food are washed away, new digestive juices are formed,
and the whole tone of the body is improved. For such purposes such
exercises as the following are extremely valuable:
Stand erect and, with the hands on hips, bend the trunk forward,
backward, and sideward, keeping the legs stiff. Trunk rotation,
performed by bending forward and then describing as large a circle as
possible with the head thrown first to the right and then to the left,
and bending the trunk backward as far as possible when that segment
of the arc is reached; lying on the back and raising first the head,
second the feet, with bent knees, and third, the feet with straight
legs. These exercises stretch the diaphragm against the liver and
portal vein, and thus squeeze out the blood from these organs and send
it back to the heart and lungs.
EXERCISES WHICH PROMOTE DEEP BREATHING
A third manner in which exercise directly assists the battle of the
blood is by increasing heart action and deep breathing. Exercises which
accomplish these functions insure an abundant supply of oxygen to the
blood and the tissues. In this manner, more heat will be produced in
the active tissues, and the blood current will carry this beneficial
glow of heat to the most distant parts. This toning up of the “heating
system” will be evidenced by the appearance of perspiration. When skin
and lung activity are thus increased, the accumulated wastes of the
body are quickly eliminated.
[Illustration: OUTDOOR EXERCISE.]
The person who takes vigorous exercise in the open air such as playing
games like tennis or golf, or who walks vigorously, will have no
need for formal breathing exercises. For those, however, who cannot
readily obtain outdoor exercises the natural way, the following chest
movements and breathing exercises are recommended. They should be taken
with the body free from tight clothing, and either in the open air
or a well-ventilated room. First, raise the hands above the head as
far as they can reach, and then bring them forward and upward several
times, and then upward and downward on the side of the head, inhaling
on the uplifting of the arms, exhaling on the sinking of the arms.
When the arms are lifted above the head, opportunity is given for the
air inhaled to reach the upper part of the lungs, parts which in the
sedentary person are very rarely used, and where usually the germs of
tuberculosis begin their evil work. Arm extension forward, breathing
deeply with arms carried sideward and backward, at shoulder height.
If those who exercise in their rooms will be careful to breathe only
through the nose and will keep the head erect, they will find that the
performance of almost any set of exercises will serve also as breathing
exercises, since they will increase lung activity.
XIII
BATHING AND CLEANLINESS
The soldiers of the body which carry on for us the battle against
disease, old age, and death, have as great and as constant a need of
water as do the human soldiers, part of whose equipment is always the
indispensable canteen. Water is needed by the body in many ways, but
it is especially required by the blood. Water is the solvent in which
float the white and red corpuscles of the blood, and the many nutritive
elements which the blood carries through the body, and the particles of
waste material which it bears to the lungs to be burnt up, or to the
other excretory organs to be ejected. By the aid of water, the minute
particles of food which are broken up and transformed by the chemical
processes of the body are conveyed to the most distant fibre of the
intricate human mechanism, wherever repair or new growth is required.
No other element of nature could so well carry on this function as
water. It is so limpid and mobile that it can move through the most
delicate and intricate network of veins, and can find its way by
osmosis or percolation into such parts as are inaccessible by openings.
The human body is constantly throwing off water. A large portion is
lost by evaporation from the skin, upon which it is poured out by
millions of what might be termed little sewer pipes or sweat ducts, for
the purpose of washing away impurities from the system. The kidneys
remove a considerable quantity, bearing with it poisonous elements
in solution, the product of various vital activities. In other ways
water is removed from the body, to the amount of about five pints
in twenty-four hours. This loss must be made good in order that the
requisite fluidity of the blood shall be maintained; and the need
of the body is expressed by thirst. Beverages which contain other
substances, as flavor, or as part of some mixed drink, are useful as
thirst quenchers just in proportion to the amount of water which they
contain.
Physiologists point to the evaporation of water from the surface of
the human body as being one of the most perfect adaptations of means
to ends exhibited in the whole circle of life. The vital activities of
the body occasion the constant production of heat. At times the heat
is greater than is needed, and would destroy the vitality of certain
tissues if it were not speedily conducted away, just as too much heat
in a stove would melt the iron of the stove. The evaporation of water
from the skin accomplishes this heat dispersal. When external heat
is great, perspiration in the normal, healthy person is more active
than when external heat is less than that in the body, and, by this
provision of Nature, the temperature of the body is maintained at about
100° Fahrenheit under all circumstances, and thus man is enabled to
exist under such great extremes of heat and cold as are found in nature.
There are numerous other ways in which water is essential to the
process of life within us. The free drinking of water greatly favors
the elimination from the system of the products of waste. It hastens
tissue change, and encourages the assimilation of food. And apart
from its use internally, it has also a very great value as a means
of applying heat to or abstracting it from the body for remedial
purposes, to say nothing of the functions it performs as a cleansing
agent. Of late years the value of water in therapeutics has become
generally recognized by the medical profession, and all over the
world its use as an active agent has increased. Indeed, in the view
of some physiologists, ordinary pure cold water is by far the most
powerful and useful of all known healing agencies. It heals not by any
strange or occult power, but by co-operating with the natural forces
of the body, by aiding to the utmost those physiological processes by
means of which the body sustains itself in health, and resists the
encroachments of disease by the means of its bodyguard of blood cells,
and by maintaining at its high pitch its innate vital resistance. When
the Austrian Priessnitz first began the use of water in his mountain
village a century ago, the world believed that the wonderful cures
he wrought were accomplished by mystical charms or incantations by
which he was supposed to communicate to the water its healing power.
Modern science, however, has revealed the secret of water’s potency as
a curative agent, and hydrotherapy, or curing by water, is now as well
recognized as almost any other branch of medical science.
THE VALUE OF BATHING
The daily cold bath is one of the best ways of keeping the doctor at a
distance. Cold water has the property of increasing vital work of all
kinds. When it is applied to the skin “impulses are sent inward that
awaken every organ of the body,” says Kellogg. Let us see what takes
place: when a person dips his body into cold water, as in sea bathing,
or when he steps into the bath at home, the first thing he does, which
in fact he finds himself doing involuntarily, is to draw in a deep
breath.
“Oooh-h-h!” he says, but he says it with an indrawing breath. The
lungs swell out, the heart begins to pound away with unusually
increased vigor and strength, and every part of the system is
stimulated. Cold bathing and deep breathing are two valuable things
which go inseparably together. The deep breathing increases lung
activity, and the lungs bring in more oxygen; the heart circulates the
blood with greater force, and hence more and better blood is carried
to every tissue of the body. The result is a stirring up of the bodily
forces, and a distribution throughout the system of a larger amount of
highly vitalized and oxygenated blood.
It has been shown definitely that cold bathing increases enormously
the number of white blood corpuscles in the blood. Whether this result
is accomplished by the birth of new cells, or by the calling forward
of cells from remote parts of the body into the general stream of the
blood, is not generally known; but the fact remains that counts of
the blood cells taken just before and just after the body has been
stimulated by cold water show a decided increase in the army of the
warrior cells.
The benefit of sea bathing comes not from the salt in the air or in
the water, as some people suppose, but simply from the cold water.
The reaction from the dip into the cold water, which is brought about
by the blood rushing to the surface to supply the heat which has been
taken from it by the application of the water, is one of the most
valuable of all curative processes. It is this reaction that sends the
blood cells scurrying actively throughout the whole fortress of the
body.
HOW COLD BATHING AIDS NUTRITION
Another way in which the application of cold water promotes the
functions of life is by the stimulation of the secretion of gastric
juice which it accomplishes. It thus helps on actively the digestive
processes by which food is absorbed and taken into the blood. The liver
and the salivary glands are stimulated in the same way.