is the king of the body, and commands all under him; and it depends on
his being good or bad whether his subjects,--the legs, and arms, and
body, and stomach, and our old friends the bowels, are in good order and
happy, or not. Now, first of all, keep the head cool. Nature has given
it a nightcap of her own in the hair, and it is the best. And keep the
head clean. Give it a good scouring every Saturday night at the least;
and if it get sore and scabbit, the best thing I know for it is to wash
it with soft soap (black soap), and put a big cabbage-blade on it every
night. Then for the _lungs_, or _lichts_,--the bellows that keep the
fire of life burning,--they are very busy in children, because a child
is not like grown-up folk, merely keeping itself up. It is doing this,
and growing too; and so it eats more, and sleeps more, and breathes more
in proportion than big folk. And to carry on all this business it must
have fresh air, and lots of it. So, whenever it can be managed, a child
should have a good while every day in the open air, and should have
well-aired places to sleep in. Then for their _nicht-gowns_, the best
are long flannel gowns; and children should be always more warmly clad
than grown-up people,--cold kills them more easily. Then there is the
_stomach_, and as this is the kitchen and great manufactory, it is
almost always the first thing that goes wrong in children, and generally
as much from too much being put in, as from its food being of an
injurious kind. A baby, for nine months after it is born, should have
almost nothing but its mother's milk. This is God's food, and it is the
best and the cheapest, too. If the baby be healthy it should be weaned
or spained at nine or ten months; and this should be done gradually,
giving the baby a little gruel, or new milk, and water and sugar, or
thin bread-berry once a day for some time, so as gradually to wean it.
This makes it easier for mother as well as baby. No child should get
meat or hard things till it gets teeth to chew them, and no baby should
ever get a drop of whiskey, or any strong drink, unless by the Doctor's
orders. Whiskey, to the soft, tender stomach of an infant, is like
vitriol to ours; it is a burning poison to its dear little body, as it
may be a burning poison and a curse to its never-dying soul. As you
value your children's health of body, and the salvation of their souls,
never give them a drop of whiskey; and let mothers, above all others,
beware of drinking when nursing. The whiskey passes from their stomachs
into their milk, and poisons their own child. This is a positive fact.
And think of a drunk woman carrying and managing a child! I was once,
many years ago, walking in Lothian Street, when I saw a woman staggering
along very drunk. She was carrying a child; it was lying over her
shoulder. I saw it slip, slippin' farther and farther back. I ran, and
cried out; but before I could get up, the poor little thing, smiling
over its miserable mother's shoulder, fell down, like a stone, on its
head on the pavement; it gave a gasp, and turned up its blue eyes, and
had a convulsion, and its soul was away to God, and its little soft,
waefu' body lying dead, and its idiotic mother grinning and staggering
over it, half seeing the dreadful truth, then forgetting it, and
cursing and swearing. That was a sight! so much misery, and wickedness,
and ruin. It was the young woman's only child. When she came to herself,
she became mad, and is to this day a drivelling idiot, and goes about
forever seeking for her child, and cursing the woman who killed it. This
is a true tale, too true.
There is another practice which I must notice, and that is giving
children laudanum to make them sleep, and keep them quiet, and for
coughs and windy pains. Now, this is a most dangerous thing. I have
often been called in to see children who were dying, and who did die,
from laudanum given in this way. I have known four drops to kill a child
a month old; and ten drops one a year old. The best rule, and one you
should stick to, as under God's eye as well as the law's, is, never to
give laudanum without a Doctor's line or order. And when on this
subject, I would also say a word about the use of opium and laudanum
among yourselves. I know this is far commoner among the poor in
Edinburgh than is thought. But I assure you, from much experience, that
the drunkenness and stupefaction from the use of laudanum is even worse
than that from whiskey. The one poisons and makes mad the body; the
other, the laudanum, poisons the mind, and makes it like an idiot's. So,
in both matters beware; death is in the cup, murder is in the cup, and
poverty and the workhouse, and the gallows, and an awful future of pain
and misery,--all are in the cup. These are the wages the Devil pays his
servants with for doing his work.
But to go back to the bairns. At first a word on our old friends, the
bowels. Let them alone as much as you can. They will put themselves and
keep themselves right, if you take care to prevent wrong things going
into the stomach. No sour apples, or raw turnips or carrots; no sweeties
or tarts, and all that kind of abomination; no tea, to draw the sides of
their tender little stomachs together; no whiskey, to kill their
digestion; no _Gundy_, or _Taffy_, or _Lick_, or _Black Man_, or _Jib_;
the less sugar and sweet things the better; the more milk and butter and
fat the better; but plenty of plain, halesome food, parritch and milk,
bread and butter, potatoes and milk, good broth,--kail as we call it.
You often hear of the wonders of cod-liver oil, and they are wonders;
poor little wretches who have faces like old puggies, and are all belly
and no legs, and are screaming all day and all night too,--these poor
little wretches under the cod-liver oil, get sonsy, and rosy, and fat,
and happy, and strong. Now, this is greatly because the cod-liver oil is
capital _food_. If you can't afford to get cod-liver oil for delicate
children, or if they reject it, give them plain olive oil, a
tablespoonful twice a day, and take one to yourself, and you will be
astonished how you will both of you thrive.
Some folk will tell you that children's feet should be always kept warm.
I say no. No healthy child's feet are warm; but the great thing is to
keep the body warm. That is like keeping the fire good, and the room
will be warm. The chest, the breast, is the place where the fire of the
body,--the heating apparatus,--is, and if you keep it warm, and give
_it_ plenty of fuel, which is fresh air and good food, you need not mind
about the feetikins, they will mind themselves; indeed, for my own part,
I am so ungenteel as to think bare feet and bare legs in summer the most
comfortable wear, costing much less than leather and worsted, the only
kind of soles that are always fresh. As to the moral training of
children, I need scarcely speak to you. What people want about these
things is, not knowledge, but the will to do what is right,--what they
know to be right, and the moral power to do it.
Whatever you wish your child to be, be it yourself. If you wish it to be
happy, healthy, sober, truthful, affectionate, honest, and godly, be
yourself all these. If you wish it to be lazy and sulky, and a liar, and
a thief, and a drunkard, and a swearer, be yourself all these. As the
old cock crows, the young cock learns. You will remember who said,
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will
not depart from it." And you may, as a general rule, as soon expect to
gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles, as get good,
healthy, happy children from diseased and lazy and wicked parents.
Let me put you in mind, seriously, of one thing that you ought to get
done to all your children, and that is, to have them vaccinated, or
inoculated with the cow-pock. The best time for this is two months after
birth, but better late than never, and in these times you need never
have any excuse for its not being done. You have only to take your
children to the Old or the New Town Dispensaries. It is a real crime, I
think, in parents to neglect this. It is cruel to their child, and it is
a crime to the public. If every child in the world were vaccinated,
which might be managed in few years, that loathsome and deadly disease,
the small-pox, would disappear from the face of the earth; but many
people are so stupid, and so lazy, and so prejudiced, as to neglect this
plain duty, till they find to their cost that it is too late. So promise
me, all seriously in your hearts, to see to this if it is not done
already, and see to it immediately.
Be always frank and open with your children. Make them trust you and
tell you all their secrets. Make them feel at ease with you, and make
_free_ with them. There is no such good plaything for grown-up children
like you and me as _weans_, wee ones. It is wonderful what you can get
them to do with a little coaxing and fun. You all know this as well as I
do, and you all practise it every day in your own families. Here is a
pleasant little story out of an old book. "A gentleman having led a
company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to get weary,
and all cried to him to carry them on his back, but because of their
multitude he could not do this. 'But,' says he, 'I'll get horses for us
all'; then cutting little wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, and
a great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle in their little
legs, and they rode cheerily home." So much for a bit of ingenious fun.
One thing, however poor you are, you can give your children, and that is
your prayers, and they are, if real and humble, worth more than silver
or gold,--more than food and clothing, and have often brought from our
Father who is in heaven, and hears our prayers, both money and meat and
clothes, and all worldly good things. And there is one thing you can
always teach your child; you may not yourself know how to read or write,
and therefore you may not be able to teach your children how to do these
things; you may not know the names of the stars or their geography, and
may therefore not be able to tell them how far you are from the sun, or
how big the moon is; nor be able to tell them the way to Jerusalem or
Australia, but you may always be able to tell them who made the stars
and numbered them, and you may tell them the road to heaven. You may
always teach them to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out to see the
mother of a little child. She was very dangerously ill, and the nurse
had left the child to come and help me. I went up to the nursery to get
some hot water, and in the child's bed I saw something raised up. This
was the little fellow under the bedclothes kneeling. I said, "What are
you doing?" "I am praying God to make mamma better," said he. God likes
these little prayers and these little people,--for of such is the
kingdom of heaven. These are his little ones, his lambs, and he hears
their cry; and it is enough if they only lisp their prayers. "Abba,
Father," is all he needs; and our prayers are never so truly prayers as
when they are most like children's in simplicity, in directness, in
perfect fulness of reliance. "They pray right up," as black Uncle Tom
says in that wonderful book, which I hope you have all read and wept
over.
I forgot to speak about punishing children. I am old-fashioned enough to
uphold the ancient practice of warming the young bottoms with some
sharpness, if need be; it is a wholesome and capital application, and
does good to the bodies, and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it
is far less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, and keeping up
a grudge at their children. Warm the bott, say I, and you will warm the
heart too; and all goes right.
And now I must end. I have many things I could say to you, but you have
had enough of me and my bairns, I am sure. Go home, and when you see the
little curly pows on their pillows, sound asleep, pour out a blessing on
them, and ask our Saviour to make them his; and never forget what we
began with, that they came from God, and are going back to him, and let
the light of eternity fall upon them as they lie asleep, and may you
resolve to dedicate them and yourselves to him who died for them and for
us all, and who was once himself a little child, and sucked the breasts
of a woman, and who said that awful saying, "Whosoever shall offend one
of these little ones, it had been better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the midst of the
sea."
SERMON IV.
HEALTH.
My dear friends,--I am going to give you a sort of sermon about your
health,--and you know a sermon has always a text; so, though I am only a
doctor, I mean to take a text for ours, and I will choose it, as our
good friends the ministers do, from that best of all books, the Bible.
Job ii. 4: "All that a man hath will he give for his life."
This, you know, was said many thousands of years ago by the Devil, when,
like a base and impudent fellow, as he always was and is, he came into
the presence of the great God, along with the good angels. Here, for
once in his life, the Devil spoke the truth and shamed himself.
What he meant, and what I wish you now seriously to consider, is, that a
man--you or I--will lose anything sooner than life; we would give
everything for it, and part with all the money, everything we had, to
keep away death and to lengthen our days. If you had L500 in a box at
home, and knew that you would certainly be dead by to-morrow unless you
gave the L500, would you ever make a doubt about what you would do? Not
you! And if you were told that if you got drunk, or worked too hard, or
took no sort of care of your bodily health, you would turn ill to-morrow
and die next week, would you not keep sober, and work more moderately,
and be more careful of yourself?
Now, I want to make you believe that you are too apt to do this very
same sort of thing in your daily life, only that instead of to-morrow or
next week, your illness and your death comes next year, or at any rate,
some years sooner than otherwise. _But your death is actually preparing
already, and that by your own hands_, by your own ignorance, and often
by your own foolish and sinful neglect and indulgence. A decay or
rottenness spreads through the beams of a house, unseen and unfeared,
and then, by and by down it comes, and is utterly destroyed. So it is
with our bodies. You plant, by sin and neglect and folly, the seeds of
disease by your own hands; and as surely as the harvest comes after the
seed-time, so will you reap the harvest of pain, and misery, and death.
And remember there is nobody to whom health is so valuable, is worth so
much, as the poor laboring man; it is his stock-in-trade, his wealth,
his capital; his bodily strength and skill are the main things he can
make his living by, and therefore he should take better care of his
body and its health than a rich man; for a rich man may be laid up in
his bed for weeks and months, and yet his business may go on, for he has
means to pay his men for working under him, or he may be what is called
"living on his money." But if a poor man takes fever, or breaks his leg,
or falls into a consumption, his wife and children soon want food and
clothes: and many a time do I see on the streets poor, careworn men,
dying by inches of consumption, going to and from their work, when, poor
fellows, they should be in their beds; and all this just because they
cannot afford to be ill and to lie out of work,--they cannot spare the
time and the wages.
Now, don't you think, my dear friends, that it is worth your while to
attend to your health? If you were a carter or a coach-driver, and had a
horse, would you not take care to give him plenty of corn, and to keep
his stable clean and well aired, and to curry his skin well, and you
would not kill him with overwork, for, besides the cruelty, this would
be a dead loss to you,--it would be so much out of your pocket? And
don't you see that God has given you your bodies to work with, and to
please him with their diligence; and it is ungrateful to him, as well as
unkind and wicked to your family and yourself, to waste your bodily
strength, and bring disease and death upon yourselves? But you will say,
"How can we make a better of it? We live from hand to mouth; we can't
have fine houses and warm clothes, and rich food and plenty of it." No,
I know that; but if you have not a fine house, you may always have a
clean one, and fresh air costs nothing,--God gives it to all his
children without stint,--and good plain clothes and meal may now be had
cheaper than ever.
Health is a word that you all have some notion of, but you will perhaps
have a clearer idea of it when I tell you what the word comes from.
Health was long ago _wholth_, and comes from the word _whole_ or _hale_.
The Bible says, "They that are whole need not a physician"; that is,
healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, a man is whole when, like
a bowl or any vessel, he is entire, and has nothing broken about him; he
is like a watch that goes well, neither too fast nor too slow. But you
will perhaps say, "You doctors should be able to put us all to rights,
just as a watchmaker can clean and sort a watch; if you can't, what are
you worth?" But the difference between a man and a watch is, that you
must try to mend the man when he is going. You can't stop him and then
set him agoing; and, you know, it would be no joke to a watchmaker, or
to the watch, to try and clean it while it was going. But God, who does
everything like himself, with his own perfectness, has put inside each
of our bodies a Doctor of his own making,--one wiser than we with all
our wisdom. Every one of us has in himself a power of keeping and
setting his health right. If a man is overworked, God has ordained that
he desires rest, and that rest cures him. If he lives in a damp, close
place, free and dry air cures him. If he eats too much, fasting cures
him. If his skin is dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap
will put him all to rights.
What we call disease or sickness is the opposite of health, and it comes
on us,--1st. By descent from our parents. It is one of the surest of all
legacies; if a man's father and mother are diseased, naturally or
artificially, he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. 2dly.
Hard work brings on disease, and some kinds of work more than others.
Masons who hew often fall into consumption; laborers get rheumatism, or
what you call "the pains"; painters get what is called their colic, from
the lead in the paint, and so on. In a world like ours, this set of
causes of disease and ill health cannot be altogether got the better of;
and it was God's command, after Adam's sin, that men should toil and
sweat for their daily bread; but more than the half of the bad effects
of hard work and dangerous employments might be prevented by a little
plain knowledge, attention, and common sense. 3dly. Sin, wickedness,
foolish and excessive pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands
die from drinking, and from following other evil courses. There is no
life so hard, none in which the poor body comes so badly off, and is
made so miserable, as the life of a drunkard or a dissolute man. I need
hardly tell you, that this cause of death and disease you can all avoid.
I don't say it is easy for any man in your circumstances to keep from
sin; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says so, and that there are no
temptations to drinking. You are much less to blame for doing this than
people who are better off; but you CAN keep from drinking, and you know
as well as I do, how much better and happier, and healthier and richer
and more respectable you will be if you do so. 4thly and lastly. Disease
and death are often brought on from ignorance, from not knowing what are
called the _laws of health_,--those easy, plain, common things which, if
you do, you will live long, and which, if you do not do, you will die
soon.
Now, I would like to make a few simple statements about this to you; and
I will take the body bit by bit, and tell you some things that you
should know and do in order to keep this wonderful house that your soul
lives in, and by the deeds done in which you will one day be
judged,--and which is God's gift and God's handiwork,--clean and
comfortable, hale, strong, and hearty; for you know that, besides doing
good to ourselves and our family and our neighbors with our bodily
labor, we are told that we should glorify God in our bodies as well as
in our souls, for they are his, more his than ours,--he has bought them
by the blood of his Son Jesus Christ. We are not our own, we are bought
with a price; therefore ought we to glorify God with our souls and with
our bodies, which are his.
Now, first, for _the skin_. You should take great care of it, for on its
health a great deal depends; keep it clean, keep it warm, keep it dry,
give it air; have a regular scrubbing of all your body every Saturday
night; and, if you can manage it, you should every morning wash not only
your face, but your throat and breast, with cold water, and rub yourself
quite dry with a hard towel till you glow all over. You should keep your
hair short if you are men; it saves you a great deal of trouble and
dirt.
Then, the inside of your _head_,--you know what is inside your
head,--your brain; you know how useful it is to you. The cleverest pair
of hands among you would be of little use without brains: they would be
like a body without a soul, a watch with the mainspring broken. Now, you
should consider what is best for keeping the brain in good trim. One
thing of great consequence is _regular sleep, and plenty of it_. Every
man should have at the least eight hours in his bed every
four-and-twenty hours, and let him sleep all the time if he can; but
even if he lies awake it is a rest to his wearied brain, as well as to
his wearied legs and arms. _Sleep is the food of the brain._ Men may go
mad and get silly, if they go long without sleep. Too much sleep is bad;
but I need hardly warn you against that, or against too much meat. You
are in no great danger from these.
Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating liquors in excess are
just so much poison to the brain. I need not say much about this, you
all know it; and we all know what dreadful things happen when a man
poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink; he
may murder his wife, or his child, and when he comes to himself he knows
nothing of how he did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he
_did_ do it, and that he may be hanged for doing something when he was
mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in his senses: but then he
knows that he made himself mad, and he must take all the wretched and
tremendous consequences.
From the brains we go to the _lungs_,--you know where they are,--they
are what the butchers call the _lichts_; here they are, they are the
bellows that keep the fire of life going; for you must know that a
clever German philosopher has made out that we are all really
burning,--that our bodies are warmed by a sort of burning or combustion,
as it is called,--and fed by breath and food, as a fire is fed with
coals and air.
Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh air, and plenty of
room to play in. About seventy thousand people die every year in Britain
from that disease of the lungs called consumption,--that is, nearly half
the number of people in the city of Edinburgh; and it is certain that
more than the half of these deaths could be prevented if the lungs had
fair play. So you should always try to get your houses well ventilated,
that means to let the air be often changed, and free from impure
mixtures; and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and be
careful to keep everything clean, and put away all filth; for filth is
not only disgusting to the eye and the nose, but is dangerous to the
health. I have seen a great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by
dying people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I have always
found that where the air was bad, the rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness
neglected, and drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which
God sends upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely
destructive. Believe this, and go home and consider well what I now say,
for you may be sure it is true.
Now we come to the _heart_. You all know where it is. It is the most
wonderful little pump in the world. There is no steam-engine half so
clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in every one of us, beat,
beating,--all day and all night, year after year, never stopping, like
a watch ticking; only it never needs to be wound up,--God winds it up
once for all. It depends for its health on the state of the rest of the
body, especially the brains and lungs. But all violent passions, all
irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk,
falling asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night,--this
often brings on disease of the heart; and you know it is not only
dangerous to have anything the matter with the heart, it is the
commonest of all causes of sudden death. It gives no warning; you drop
down dead in a moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the
moral organ, "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the
issues of life."
We now come to the _stomach_. You all know, I dare say, where it lies!
It speaks for itself. Our friends in England are very respectful to
their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, and we make too little.
If an Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach; if an
Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he's "kilt entirely"; and if a
Scotsman, it is in his "heed." Now, I wish I saw Scots men and women as
nice and particular about their stomachs, or rather about what they put
into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your
genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we
may put in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior:--