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_The_
HEALTHY
LIFE
The Independent
Health Magazine
VOLUME V
JULY-DECEMBER 1913
LONDON
GRAHAM HOUSE, TUDOR ST., E.C.
INDEX
VOLUME V.--JULY-DECEMBER 1913
Ballade of Skyfaring, A, S. Gertrude Ford, 490
Book Reviews, 532
Breathe, On Learning to, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630
Camping Out, C.R. Freeman, 438, 480
Care of Cupboards, Florence Daniel, 530
Castles in the Air, E.M. Cobham, 582
Cloud-capped Towers, E.M. Cobham, 626
Correspondence, 504, 533, 580, 658
Cottage Cheese, 658
Curtained Doorways, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 561
Doctor on Doctors, A, 637
Doctor's Reason for Opposing Vaccination, A, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597
Doctors and Health, 633
Fasting, A Significant Case, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492
Fear and Imagination, E.M. Cobham, 510
Food and the Source of Bodily Energy, 507
Fruit-Oils and Nuts, 659
Futurist Gardening, G.G. Desmond, 451
Health Queries, Dr H. Valentine Knaggs:--
About Sugar, 540;
Bad Case of Self-poisoning, 502;
Boils, their Cause and Cure, 498;
Canary _versus_ Jamaica Bananas, 579;
Can Malaria be Prevented? 466;
Cereal Food in the Treatment of Neuritis, 619;
Correct Blending of Foods, 655;
Concerning Cottage Cheese, 617;
Deafness, 615, 616;
Diet for Obstinate Cough, 618;
Diet for Ulcerated Throat, 575;
Dilated Heart, 653;
Difficulties in Changing to Non-Flesh Diet, 655;
Dry Throat, 653;
Eczema as a Sign of Returning Health, 613;
Excessive Perspiration, 574;
Farming and Sciatica, 575;
Faulty Food Combinations, 536;
Giddiness and Head Trouble, 468;
Going to Extremes in the Unfired Diet, 543;
Long Standing Gastric Trouble, 470;
Malt Extract, 539;
Neuritis, 538;
Onion Juice as Hair Restorer, 651;
Phosphorus and the Nerves, 577;
Refined Paraffin as a Constipation Remedy, 652;
Saccharine, 653;
Stammering, 654;
Severe Digestive Catarrh, 471;
Sciatica, 651;
Temporary "Bright's Disease" and How to Deal with it, 576;
Ulceration of the Stomach, 541;
Unfired Diet for a Child, 467;
Water Grapes, 619;
Why the Red Corpuscles are Deficient in Anaemia, 654
Health and Joy in Hand-weaving, Minnie Brown, 591
Health through Reading, Isabella Fyvie Mayo, 517
Healthy Brains, E.M. Cobham, 448, 474, 510, 546, 582
Healthy Homemaking, Florence Daniel, 495, 528
Healthy Life Abroad, D.M. Richardson, 559
Healthy Life Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641
Hired Help, Florence Daniel, 495, 528
Holiday Aphorisms, Peter Piper, 508, 527
How Much Should We Eat? 442, 477, 513, 563, 593
Human Magnetism, 505
Imagination in Insurance, E.M. Cobham, 546
Imagination in Play, E.M. Cobham, 474
Imagination in Use, E.M. Cobham, 448
Indication, An, Editors, 437, 473, 509, 545, 581, 621
Learning to Breathe, On, Dr J. Stenson Hooker, 630
Letters of a Layman, I., 633
Lime Juice, Pure, 534
Longevity, A Remedy for, Edgar J. Saxon, 491
Mental Healing, A Scientific Basis for, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456
Midsummer Madness, Edgar J. Saxon, 454
Modern Germ Mania: A Case in Point, Dr H.V. Knaggs, 638
More About Two Meals a Day, Wilfred Wellock, 487
New Race, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 601
Ode to the West Wind, Shelley, 555
Pickled Peppercorns, Peter Piper, 464, 570, 609, 660
Plain Words and Coloured Pictures, Edgar J. Saxon, 622
Play Spirit, The, D.M. Richardson, 602
Play Spirit, The: A Criticism, L.E. Hawks, 628
Quest for Beauty, The, Edgar J. Saxon, 523
Recipes, 462, 571, 610, 641
Remedy for Longevity, A, Edgar J. Saxon, 491
Remedy for Sleeplessness, 533
Salads and Salad Dressings, 462
Salt Cooked Vegetables, 506
Swan Song of September, The, S. Gertrude Ford, 523
Sea-sickness, Some Remedies, Hereward Carrington, 484
Semper Fidelis, "A.R.," 526
Sleeplessness, A Remedy, 533
Scientific Basis for Mental Healing, A, J. Stenson Hooker, M.D., 456
Scientific Basis of Vegetalism, The, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584
Significant Case, A, A. Rabagliati, M.D., 458, 492
Symposium on Unfired Food, A, D. Godman, 486, 648
Taste or Theory? Arnold Eiloart, B.Sc., 643
Travels in Two Colours, Edgar J. Saxon, 605
To-morrow's Flowers, G.G. Desmond, 451
Two Meals a Day, More About, Wilfred Wellock, 487
Vaccination, A Doctor's Reason for Opposing, Dr J.W. Hodge, 597
Vegetalism, The Scientific Basis of, Prof. H. Labbe, 549, 584
West Wind, Ode to, Shelley, 555
What makes a Holiday? C., 557
World's Wanderers, The, Shelley, 625
THE
HEALTHY
LIFE
The Independent
Health Magazine.
3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.
VOL. V JULY
No. 24. 1913
_There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and
philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one
another._--CLAUDE BERNARD.
AN INDICATION.
Some laymen are very fond of deprecating the work of specialists,
holding that specialisation tends to narrowness, to inability to see
more than one side of a question.
It is, of course, true that the specialist tends to "go off at a
tangent" on his particular subject, and even to treat with contempt or
opposition the views of other specialists who differ from him. But all
work that is worth doing is attended by its own peculiar dangers. It
is here that the work of the non-specialist comes in. It is for him to
compare the opposing views of the specialists, to reveal one in the
light thrown by the other, to help into existence the new truth
waiting to be born of the meeting of opposites.
Specialisation spells division of labour, and apart from division of
labour certain great work can never be done. To do away with such
division, supposing an impossibility to be possible, would simply mean
reversion to the state of the primitive savage. But we have no call
to attempt the abolition of even the minutest division of labour. What
is necessary is to understand and guard against its dangers.
Specialisation _may_ lead to madness, as electricity _may_ lead to
death. But no specialist need go far astray who, once in a while, will
make an honest attempt to come to an understanding with the man whose
views are diametrically opposed to his own. For thus he will retain
elasticity of brain, and gain renewed energy for, and perhaps fresh
light on, his own problems.--[EDS.]
CAMPING OUT.
IV. THE FIVE-FOOT SAUSAGE.
The question of blankets and mattresses may be taken as settled. We
can now sleep quite comfortably, take our fresh air sleeping and
waking, and find shelter when it rains. But that same fresh air brings
appetite and we must see how that appetite is to be appeased.
Take a frying-pan. It should be of aluminium for lightness; though a
good stout iron one will help you make good girdle-cakes, if you get
it hot and drop the flour paste on it. You must find some other way of
making girdle-cakes, and if you take an iron frying pan with you,
don't say that I told you to.
Though it is obviously necessary that a frying-pan should have a
handle, I was bound to tell Gertrude that I do not find it convenient
to take handled saucepans when I go camping. I take for all boiling
purposes, including the making of tea, what is called a camp-kettle.
Most ironmongers of any standing seem to keep it, and those who have
it not in stock can show you an illustration of it in their wholesale
list. It is just like the pot in which painters carry their paint,
except that it has an ordinary saucepan lid. You should have a "nest"
of these--that is, three in diminishing sizes going one inside the
other. The big lid then fits on the outer one and the two other lids
have to be carried separately.
[Illustration: _The Five-Foot Sausage_]
You hang these camp-kettles over the fire by their bucket handles,
from the tripod or other means of getting over the fire. Sometimes the
bough of a tree high out of the reach of the flames will do. Sometimes
a stick or oar thrust into the bank or in a crevice of the wall behind
the fire is more convenient than a tripod. Again, you can do without
any hanging at all, making a little fireplace of bricks or stones and
standing the saucepans "on the hob."
It is a simple thing to tie the tops of three sticks together and make
a tripod. Then from the place where they join you dangle a piece of
string, pass it through the handle of the kettle and tie it to itself,
in a knot that can be adjusted up or down to raise or lower the kettle
from the fire. This knot is our old friend the two half-hitches. Pass
the loose end round the down cord, letting it come back under the up
cord, then round again with the same finish, and lo! the up cord makes
two half-hitches round the down cord. You can slip, them up and put
them where you like and they will hold, but you have to undo them to
take the kettle clean away from the fire. So we add to our equipment a
few pot-hooks or pieces of steel wire shaped like an S. Their use will
be obvious. If we have three of them it is quite easy to keep three
kettles going over one fire. They swing cheek by jowl when they all
want the same amount of fire, but each can be raised or lowered an
inch or several inches to let them respectively boil, simmer or just
keep warm.
These are the cooking utensils. A biscuit tin would make an oven and
Gertrude says she must have an oven. For my part I would not attempt
baking when camping out and I will say no more about ovens, except
that all the biscuit tins in the world won't beat a hole in the ground
first filled with blazing sticks and then with the things to be baked
and covered with turves till they are done.
I had great difficulty in persuading Gertrude to feed out of tin
dishes like those which we use sometimes for making shallow round
cakes or setting the toffee in. They are ever so much better than
plates, being deep enough for soup-plates and not easy to upset when
you use them on your lap. Any number of the same size will go into one
another and a dozen scarcely take up more room than one.
It was worse still when it came to a still more useful substitute, the
camp equivalent of the teacup. In the first place we abolish the
saucer, for the simple reason that we have no earthly use for it in
camp. We take tin mugs with sloping sides and wire bucket handles.
They fit into one another in the same accommodating way as the eating
dishes. Gertrude was nearly put off this device altogether by Basil's
remark that he had only seen them in use in poulterers' shops, where
they are put under hares' noses....
"Basil, you, you monster," cried Gertrude, and I had to push those tin
mugs as though I had been a traveller interested in the sale of them.
The drinking of hot tea out of these mugs is quite a beautiful art.
You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little
finger at the edge of the bottom rim. It is thus able to tilt the mug
to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking. When
Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the
mugs. She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and
insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out of
spode.
Smaller mugs of the same shape do for egg-cups, and the egg-spoons I
take to camp are the bone ones, seldom asked for but easy to get in
most oil-and-colour shops. Dessert spoons and forks and table knives
are of the usual pattern, but the former can be had in aluminium and
therefore much lighter than Britannia metal.
The camping-out valise is by all means the rucksack. Never the
knapsack. I am almost ashamed to say this, because as far as my
knowledge goes the knapsack is now obsolete. It may be, however, that
it lingers here and there. If you see one, buy it for a museum if you
like but not for use. The bundle should be allowed to fit itself to
the back, as it does in a canvas bag. Suppose now that you fix the V
point of a pair of braces somewhere near the top of the sack and
bringing the webs over your shoulders, fix them, nicely adjusted, to
the lower corners of the sack, it will ride quite comfortably upon
your back--that is, you have made it from a plain sack into a rucksack
or back-sack. Get or make as many good large strong ones as you have
shoulders in the party to carry them. Have them made of a waterproof
canvas, green or brown, to reeve up tight with strong cord passed
through a series of eyelet-holes and, if you would be quite certain of
keeping out the rain, with a little hood to cover the reeved bag end.
The great bulk of your luggage you will generally find it best to
carry by wheeling it on a bicycle. Spread your ground-sheet on the
floor. On that lay your blankets, doubled so as to make a smaller
square, tent, mattress cover and bed suits on that, then your camping
utensils and all other paraphernalia and roll the whole up into a
sausage about five feet long, when the loose ends of the ground-sheet
have been tucked over as in a brown-paper parcel. Tie it well with
whipcord and fasten it to the top bar of your bicycle frame, leaving
freedom of course for the handles and the front wheel to move and
steer. Push the tent-poles through the lashings and start for your
camp at a comfortable four or five miles an hour. You will find it
easy to move camp at the rate of twenty miles a day and will see a
great deal of country in the course of a fortnight.
The sausage on the bicycle shown in the illustration may be taken to
contain all the gear and a little food. The rucksacks will take the
rest and each man's most precious personal belongings. There is a
small parcel tied to the handle-bar, scarcely to be seen because it is
smaller than the end of the sausage. It is a complete tent tied up in
its ground-sheet.
C.R. FREEMAN.
HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT: A WARNING.
_This article, by one of the pioneers of modern dietetics, is in the
nature of a challenge, and is certain to arouse discussion among all
who have studied the food question closely._--[EDS.]
When men lived on their natural food, quantities settled themselves.
When a healthy natural appetite had been sated the correct quantity of
natural food had been taken.
To-day all this is upside down, there is no natural food and only too
often no natural healthy appetite either. Thus the question of
quantity is often asked and many go wrong over it. The all-sufficient
answer to this question is: "Go back to the foods natural to the human
animal and this, as well as a countless number of other problems, will
settle themselves."
But supposing that this cannot be done, suppose, as is often the case,
that the animal fed for years on unnatural food has become so
pathological that it can no longer take or digest its natural food?
Those who take foods which are stimulants are very likely to overeat,
and when they leave off their stimulants they are equally likely to
underfeed themselves. Flesh foods are such stimulants, for it is
possible to intoxicate those quite unaccustomed to them with a large
ration of meat just as well as with a large ration of alcohol. The one
leads to the other, meat leads to alcohol, alcohol to meat. Taking any
stimulant eventually leads to a call for other stimulants.
How are we to tell when a given person is getting enough food, either
natural or partly natural? Medically speaking, there is no difficulty;
there are plenty of guides to the required knowledge, some of them of
great delicacy and extreme accuracy. The trouble generally is that
these guides are not made use of, as the cause of the disaster is not
suspected. A physiologist is not consulted till too late, perhaps till
the disorder in the machinery of life is beyond repair.
Diminishing energy and power, decreasing endurance, slowing
circulation, lessening blood colour, falling temperature, altered
blood pressure, enlarging heart and liver, are some of the most
obvious signs with which the physician is brought into contact in such
cases. But every one of these may, and very often does, pass unnoticed
for quite a long time by those who have had no scientific training.
The public are extremely ignorant on such matters because the natural
sciences have been more neglected in this country in the last fifty
years than anywhere else in Europe, and that is saying a good deal.
Hence diet quacks and all those who trade on the ignorance and
prejudices of the public are having a good time and often employ it in
writing the most appalling rubbish in reference to the important
subject of nutrition.
Being themselves ignorant and without having studied physiology, even
in its rudiments, they do not appear to consider that they should at
least abstain from teaching others till they have got something
certain for themselves.
If the public were less ignorant they would soon see through their
pretensions; but, as it is, things go from bad to worse, and it is not
too much to say that hundreds of lives have been lost down this sordid
by-path of human avarice.
On one single day a few weeks ago the writer heard of three men, two
of whom had been so seriously ill that their lives were in danger, and
one of whom had died. The certified cause of death in this case might
not have led the uninitiated to suspect chronic starvation, but those
who were behind the scenes knew that this was its real cause. A
further extraordinary fact was that two out of these three men were
members of the medical profession, whose training in physiology ought,
one would have thought, to have saved them from such errors.
The conclusion seems to be that they did not use their knowledge
because at first they had no suspicion of the real cause of their
illness. In other words, chronic starvation is insidious and, if no
accurate scientific measurements are made, its results, being
attributed to other causes, are often allowed to become serious before
they are properly treated.
These three men went wrong by following a layman quite destitute of
physiological training, who APPEARED to have produced some wonderful
results in himself and others on extraordinarily small quantities of
food.
If the above tests had been made at once by a trained hand the error
involved in such results could not have escaped detection, and none of
these men would have endangered their lives. I myself examined the
layman in question and finding him not up to standard refused to
follow him. The writer has no difficulty in recalling at least a dozen
cases similar to those above mentioned which have been under his care
in the last twelve months, and the three above mentioned were none of
them under his care at the time of their danger.
What, then, must be our conclusions in reference to these and similar
facts of which it is only possible to give a mere outline here? I
suggest that they are:--
1. Food quantities are of extreme importance.
2. These quantities were settled by physiologists many years ago, and
no good reasons have since been adduced for altering them.
3. The required quantity is approximately nine or ten grains of
proteid per day for each pound of bone and muscle in the body weight.
4. Any considerable departure from this quantity continued over months
and years leads to disaster.
5. The nature of this disaster may appear to be very various and its
real cause is thus frequently overlooked.
I will say a few words about each of these except the first, which is
already obvious. The layman above mentioned asserted that he could
live on but little more than half this quantity, but the food quantity
really required is that which will keep up normal strength, normal
circulation, normal colour, normal temperature and normal mental
power. As we have got perfectly definite standards of all these normal
conditions, serious danger can only be run into by neglecting to
measure them.
It is also possible to tell fairly accurately the quantity of food a
man is taking in a day, and then, by collecting and estimating his
excreta, the quantity also out of this food which he is utilising
completely and burning up in his body.
You would say that no danger should be possible with all these
safeguards, and yet the above case history shows that of two trained
physiologists, members of the medical profession, one died at least
twenty years before his time, and the other was in great danger and
only recovered slowly and with difficulty. Another similar case came
to the writer suffering from increasing debility and what appeared to
be some form of dyspepsia. He was quite unable to pass any of the
above-named tests as to physiological standards, and an investigation
of his excreta showed that his food was at least one-fifth or
one-sixth below its proper quantity and had probably been so for many
months past. Some of his doctors had been giving his "disease" a more
or less long list of names and yet had not noted the one essential
fact of chronic defective nutrition and its cause--underfeeding.
Naturally their treatment was of no avail, but when he had been sent
to a nursing home and had put back the 20 lbs. of weight he had lost
he came slowly back to more normal standards and is now out of danger.
In this case there was marked loss of weight, and few people, one
would think, would overlook such a sign of under nutrition. But loss
of weight is not always present in these cases, at least not at first.
Some people tend to grow stout on deficient proteid, and then the fact
that some of the essential tissues of the body (the muscles, the heart
and the blood) are being dangerously impoverished is very likely to be
overlooked. In the case last mentioned the loss of weight was put down
to the dyspepsia, whereas the real fact was that the "dyspepsia" and
loss of weight were both results of a chronic deficiency in food.
It is evident that some care about food quantities must be taken by
all those who do not live on natural foods. For physiologists there is
no difficulty in settling the question of quantity in accordance with
the signs of the physiology of a normal body. That all, even
physiologists, may run into danger if, while living on unnatural or
partly unnatural foods, or while making any change of food, they do
not consider the question of quantity with sufficient care.
That the question of nutrition should be considered in relation to
_every illness_ even though it may appear on the surface to have no
direct connection with foods or quantities. As a matter of fact, the
nature of the food and its quantity controls all the phenomena of
life. Some twenty years ago most people lived fairly close to the old
physiological quantities, now they have been cut adrift from these and
completely unsettled and are floundering out of their depth. A most
unsatisfactory, even dangerous, condition of affairs.
For the public it will now probably suffice if they insist on raising
the question of quantity whenever they suffer in any way. If they are
unable to answer the question themselves let them go to a trained
physiologist who can do so, and not to a diet quack. But muscular
strength, endurance, mental and bodily energy, skin circulation,
temperature and blood colour are all things which the public can see
for themselves and from which they should in all cases be able to get
sufficient warning to save them from the worst forms of disaster.
Some people imagine that they eat very little, when as a matter of
fact they have good healthy appetites. Others again think they are
eating a great deal, when as a matter of fact they take very little.
In both cases a physiological test of the excreta will give accurate
information. I once had a medical patient who imagined that he
produced great amounts of force and performed feats of endurance on
wonderfully small quantities of food. His excreta showed, however,
that he was merely under-estimating the food he took. A fat man may
seem to be living on very little, but fat does not require to be fed,
and his real bone and muscle weight is not large. A thin man may seem
to require a large quantity of food, but he is really very heavy in
bone and muscle, the tissues that have to be nourished. In all these
ways appearances are apt to be deceptive for those who are ignorant of
science and who do not go down to the root of the matter.
It is not necessary to follow the given quantity of grains per pound
slavishly and without regard to consequences. It is necessary to see
that the required physiological results are obtained.
If a patient says he can live on less than I ordered for him and if
he can pass the physiological tests satisfactorily I know that his
bone and muscle weight has been over-estimated. On the other hand, if
a patient falls below the physiological tests, though taking and
digesting the quantities ordered for him, I conclude that his bone and
muscle weight has been under-estimated.
In all cases it is possible to obtain the best physiological results
and to say when quantities are just right, neither too much nor too
little.
The evil effects of too much are not serious; they entail perhaps a
little "gout" or some temporary loss of freedom from waste products.
The evil effects of too little, if persevered in and continued,
especially if some of these effects are attributed to causes which
have no real existence, are deadly and dangerous, for they bring on an
insidious deterioration both of function and structure which leads by
several avenues, often miscalled "diseases," to death itself.
M.D.
HEALTHY BRAINS.
_Comparatively few health enthusiasts or food reformers realise the
necessity for mental, as distinct from bodily, hygiene, yet all real
health has its roots in the mind. Moreover, it is only by studying the
hygiene of mind that we are enabled to do work in greater quantity and
of better quality than we should otherwise be capable of, and to do
this without risk of strain on the nerves or injury to health. The
articles under this heading put forward some of the elementary laws of
mental hygiene._--[EDS.]
IMAGINATION IN USE.
To some people any talk about the importance of training the
imagination of children through their toys, games and studies seems
fantastic and trivial. They compare it to feeding them on sweetmeats;
they think it means substituting story books for real life and
encouraging the easy exercise of fancy for the careful study of fact.
But imagination is not a mere ornament to a life-work; it is rather
one of its most valuable and necessary tools. If it did no more than
sweeten and adorn the world, it would be well worth having, well worth
making considerable sacrifices to attain. But it does more than this.
It bears much fruit as well as flowers; fruit that, if it ripens in
suitable weather, endures and can be used for the service of man.
There is a wonderful palm-tree, called the Tal or Palmyra palm, which
in India and Ceylon supports six or seven millions of people, and
"works" also in West Africa, where it is probably native. It gives its
young shoots and unripe seeds as food; its trunk makes a whole boat,
or a drum or a walking-stick, according to size; hats, mats, thread
and baskets--in fact, almost all kinds of clothing and utensils--are
made from the split and plaited leaves; gum comes from it, and certain
medicines, jaggery sugar too and an intoxicating drink for those who
desire it. In one of the museums at Kew--a wet day brings always
_something_ besides disappointment--there is a book made up of the
very leaves of the palm, containing a Tamil poem enumerating more than
eight hundred human uses to which this marvellous single plant can be
put.
Now the imagination is like a Palmyra palm. We stand a long way off
and, looking up, say "What a graceful tree! But what a pity it
produces that intoxicating 'toddy' and nothing else!" Yet all the
while food and clothing and shelter and travel and learning are all
wrapped up in it, if only we were not too ignorant to guess, or too
idle to seek.
We talk as if the poet and painter had need of imagination, but not
the student, the doctor, the philanthropist, the business man, whereas
none of these can do work at a really human standard without
imagination that is living, penetrating, active and yet trained and
disciplined.
A recent illuminating address to a body of students pointed out that
Germany's immense industrial strides have been made possible by an
education which draws men's minds out of narrow old grooves, and helps
them to see and grasp wider possibilities. But the same speaker went
on to point out that the English worker has far more real initiative
and imagination than the German, and that in our own country we have
not even to make elaborate plans for developing these qualities, but
rather to release them in our administrators so far as to prevent
actually checking them in the children now growing up.
Imagination in business, for instance, means new possibilities, fresh
sources of supply and fresh markets to demand, economy of working and
better adjustment of work to worker, so as to have less waste of our
greatest capital, human time and power. America has taught us
something in these respects; what we must do is to take what new light
she has developed, while keeping our long-grown, well-earned skill
which she has not had the chance to make.
In research work, again, we need perpetually the synthetic and
constructive imagination if individual work is not to become narrowly
specialised and shut off from other divergent or parallel lines which
would illuminate it. The other day I was told of a great surgeon who
not only has six or seven assistants to help him in his immediate
tasks, but also, since he is too busy in the service of humanity to
have time for reading, has eight trained assistants whose business it
is to read in many languages what is being done all over the civilised
world in his own line, and keep him informed as to the development of
experience. A wonderful advance on the crystallisation of individual
method, this, and yet it needed but the imaginative projection upon
scientific work of what every business firm and every political unit
has long done.
To transfer to our own concerns a method developed elsewhere is one of
the most valuable services imagination can render. Almost all
educational reform comes about thus, most mechanical inventions, a
great part of economy and comfort in individual homes. Also, besides
these particular advantages, the incessant coming and going between
the different fields of activity, the circulation of attention which
this use of the imagination involves, tends to vitalise and enrich
not only the individuals who carry it out, but the whole social
organism of which they form part.
Upon the moral side not much need be said. "Put yourself in his place"
is a very old and respectable recipe for growing justice in one's
conduct, consideration in one's speech, sympathy in one's heart. As
employer or magistrate, as teacher or nurse, as customer or shopman,
as parent or husband or child we must all deal somehow with our
fellow-men: honestly and truthfully, we mean, kindly and helpfully, we
hope. But is it not the more or the less of our imagination that makes
such dealings possible? Without it, we are cruel because of something
we do not feel, unjust because there is something we do not know,
unwittingly deceitful because there is something we do not understand.
With it, our justice will support, our kindness uplift, our attempt at
help will not be barren, but will awake response and raise the whole
level of our human intercourse into a region of higher possibilities.
E.M. COBHAM.
FUTURIST GARDENING.
TO-MORROW'S FLOWERS.
These three months of July, August and September are the second
seed-time. I think they must be the most proper sowing-time, for is it
not clear that Nature sows seed, not in spring, but in autumn? At any
rate, now we can do more towards making a perpetually beautiful flower
garden than in any other season. The biennials, those that blossom in
their second year of life and those jolly perennials that come up year
after year and always stronger than before, without any trouble on our
part, are best started in life not too long before the winter.
Spring-sown seed sometimes forgets that it is biennial and blossoms
rather futilely the same summer, and at other times it grows so lush
and large by winter that it cannot stand the frost.
Now we see the flowers in blossom in the vineyards of our friend
Naboth and we know which we should most like in our own garden. There
is an exquisite joy in begging or stealing a few seeds and bringing
them home to blossom for us as they did for Naboth. I carry at this
time a few small envelopes bought for a few pence a hundred at
Straker's, and whenever I see something nice in seed I bag it. In
another week it would drop beneath the plant it grew on and, not being
cared for by a gardener, would be smothered or hoed up. In a nice
little seed-bed all to itself it can unfold all manner of pleasure for
its abductor.
Plant your flower seeds on a nice ripe, rich bed--that is, one
compounded of old and even half-used manure. Keep the seedlings
watered as they grow and by judicious pricking-out give them the room
they need. About October you can plant the best of them in the place
where you want a good bush next year, and, if it is a perennial, you
have for many years to come a beautiful plant with a personal history.
Even if you have bought your penn'orth of seed there may be a pleasant
anecdote connected with it. My garden is at present amazingly blue
with Dropmore Alkanet (Anchusa). Three years ago I bought three seeds
for a penny. Two of them came up. I slashed up the plants and now I
have half-a-dozen clumps as well as a similar number left in the old
garden whence I have removed.
If you asked me what kinds of seed in particular you ought to plant
for perennial flowers just now, I might want many more pages to tell
you in. Let me give you a very short list of those that most appeal to
me on the spur of the moment. It will be enough to go on with:--
Trollius (globe flower).
Helianthemum (rock rose).
Epilobium (willow herb).
Hollyhock.
Echinops (globe thistle).
Anchusa Italica, Dropmore variety.
Lupine.
Tritoma (red-hot poker).
Heuchera (coral-root).
Yarrow.
Lychnis (garden campion).
Inula (Elecampane).
Funkia (Plaintain lily).
Eremurus.
This list is representative because it includes some species, such as
Eremurus, Trollius and Tritoma, that are not usually grown from seed
by the amateur. To raise these rather expensive monsters from
pennyworths of seed is a floral adventure which brings its own
abundant reward.
I should be very proud of a garden that consisted entirely of plants
that I had raised from seed. It might be one that had never had
anything else in or the seedlings might gradually oust the bulbs and
corms and grown plants with which the garden began. There would be
many things there intrinsically as well as extrinsically valuable.
Carnation seed, for example, is constantly producing new varieties,
and to grow rose seedlings is even to court fortune. It is a long time
before you see your rose. The seed takes sometimes two years to
germinate, and then you have to wait a year or two before you get a
typical blossom. The growers hurry matters by cutting a very tiny bud
from the first sprout and splicing that on to an older stock. One of
the advantages of having your roses grown from seed and on their own
stocks would be that they could not produce wild suckers.
I have just seen a wonderful grove of Aquilegias, the glorified
columbine which has the centre of one colour and the outside petals of
another--sulphur with mauve or yellow with pink, and many other
varieties. The nucleus was grown from shop seed and the rest from the
seed of the first-comers. The only thing to choose between them is
that the new ones have produced a least one variety not represented in
the first batch. You may be sure that I am going to get some seed
from here and raise some Aquilegias for myself. Good reader, go thou
and do likewise.
G.G. DESMOND.
MIDSUMMER MADNESS.
We had come, "3.7" and I, to the Boundary, a white, unpaved road which
winds across the full width of Wimbledon Common, from the old Roman
camp to the windmill. Simultaneously we cried a halt, I because I
never cross that road without some hesitation, he because he wanted to
get out of the folding go-cart in which he had been riding and turn
it, with the aid of a small piece of string and a big piece of
imagination, into a 40-horse-power motor car.
On the map the road is not called the Boundary. If you want to know
why I call it so I can only say that once you have crossed it things
are different; I do not mean a difference merely of country or
scenery, but a difference of atmosphere; better, and more literally, a
change of spirit. To put it bluntly, I never knew the reality of
fairyland until I blundered across that road one grey gusty evening
ten years ago, and heard the tall grasses whistling in the wind. Since
then the road has always been a frontier, not to be crossed without
preparation.
As "3.7" tumbled out of his go-cart I looked at my watch and saw it
lacked but a few minutes to noon. It was just such a cloudless June
day as must have inspired Shelley's _Hymn of Apollo_. No smallest
cloud to break the dazzling blue; and, high above our heads, Apollo,
standing "at noon upon the peak of heaven."
If it had been Midsummer Day I should have thought twice about
crossing the Boundary. As it was, we were quite near enough to the
24th of June to make it risky. So, as "3.7" bent a tangled head over
the bonnet of his Daimler, I flung myself down on the level turf
beside him and stared across the road.
Behind us and on either side were clumps of gorse bushes, and beyond
them the immense level expanse of the open heath. Immediately in front
was the road, sunk a foot beneath the turf, which comes right up to
it, both on this side and that.
"Another piece of string, please," said "3.7," rummaging in my pockets
without waiting for an answer, "and a pencil, and----"
And then I saw it. On the farther side of the road there is a stretch
of short turf, some hundred yards wide; and beyond that an irregular
line of silver birches; and beyond that the blue of distant hills, for
the Common slopes down where the trees begin. Between the silvery wood
and the road, through the midst of the wide belt of turf, and parallel
with the Boundary, ran a river. There was nothing to be much surprised
at, for it was just the kind of river you would expect to see running
through the fields of fairyland. It was a river of grass.
It was the slender-stalked, tufted, not very tall, grey-headed grass
that grows quite generally in open country and wild places. But the
wind and the sun now turned it into a river which ran fast between its
banks of green, its waves silvery grey, quick-flowing waves, gleaming
and dappled, an endless succession. It flowed from somewhere out of
sight in the west, and disappeared to the east over the edge of the
great slope that brings you down to the woods, vanishing, to all
intents and purposes, over the edge of the world.
Without taking my eyes off this astonishing spectacle I stretched out
a hand and, catching "3.7" by the edge of his white smock, told him to
run across the road to the grass and--paddle in it. I said it was
better than motor cars. He made no comment on this but, after glancing
warily up and down the road (for he has been brought up in wholesome
awe of the entire tribe of automobiles), he crossed the Boundary, ran
across the turf and plunged up to his knees in the river.
I cannot be certain, but it is my considered opinion that Apollo
stopped his golden chariot for the space of a whole minute to look
down at the golden-haired boy wading in that noiseless, fast-flowing
river.
In another minute "3.7" was back at my side, both hands full of the
tufted grass he had pulled. I regret to say he tickled my ear with it.
* * * * *
Honest, solemn reader, ardent food reformer, keen educationist,
clear-headed moralist, practical-minded housewife, I tell you frankly
there is no moral to this little episode. It throws no light on what
to eat, or on the purchasing power of an English shilling, or on the
ethical training of young children, or on the nature of neurasthenia.
Fairyland, of course, is a childish fiction, Apollo a solar myth, a
road is a road, grass is grass and heaven is a state of mind. I quite
agree with you. But let me whisper something in your ear. If you
should ever blunder across your Boundary, don't be surprised if things
look queer on the other side; above all, whatever you do, don't let
any strange river you may find flowing there carry you away, or it may
bring you, spite of all your protests, through one of the gates of
pearl into the City of God.
EDGAR J. SAXON.
A SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR MENTAL HEALING.
There is a vast amount of loose talk, and innumerable assertions from
irresponsible individuals concerning the wonders that have been
achieved by Mental Healing, but naturally the scientist and physician,
when dealing with such a question as this, has to put aside, not all
enthusiasm, but certainly all emotionalism, and then, most carefully
sift the evidence laid before him. The scientist here wants hard, dry,
irrefutable facts; the responsible physician requires to know--by his
own careful diagnosis or by an array of tabulated facts--the condition
of the patient before and after treatment--that is, of the one who
claims to have been cured by mental means. Innumerable claims are
thus being made by patients and others, so that it is imperative for
the unbiased physician at all events to consider the above question;
this in order to give a reason for the faith that is in him, when he
is known to be one of those who favour the metaphysical means of
healing. Even the sciolist in the matter knows that in the case, say,
of blushing, or blanching of the face, the action of mind over
matter--of the body--is palpable; all admit that the quality of joy,
for instance, will prove a splendid tonic; that despair, on the other
hand, will pull down the bodily condition. But all this, we shall be
told, is unconscious action; true, but fortunately we are now aware
that by a forceful action of the will we can _consciously_ direct or
derivate, as the case may be, currents of nerve-force to any part of
the body. Occultists have known this for many centuries. Joy, hope,
faith: these are very potent factors in improving the health
conditions--simply because they act upon the sympathetic nervous
system, and this latter acts upon the circulation. Happiness dilates
the blood-vessels. Fear contracts them. Thus, unbounded faith; renewed
hope; sudden joy; enforced will-power; all have a marked effect upon
bringing about an equilibriated condition of the circulation--just the
same as a hot bath does, though not so rapidly or so perceptibly.
Further, we must remember that all disease more or less is a stasis, a
congestion, somewhere; we have only to dissipate this; to separate the
cells; to expand the part, as it were, and "resolution," as we call it
in congestion of the lungs, takes place. So that it seems to me that
we can fairly claim a strictly scientific basis for Mental Healing. I
have always, however, maintained that the attitude of the patient's
own mind has much to do with the result: in his consciousness there
must be faith and hope in order to get the best effect.
Judging, then, of the very remarkable and palpable changes which
anyone can see occur on such superficial parts as the face and
extremities, I can see no reason that, by an enforced mental action,
the deeper parts--including any hidden diseased part--should not be
altered for good. I am very confident that it is upon these lines,
coupled, as they can always be, with advice as to clean feeding and
right living generally, the physician of the future will largely
depend for his cures. Thus we are fully justified in not only trying
the system on "functional," but also for "organic," cases.
J. STENSON HOOKER, M.D.
A SIGNIFICANT CASE.
ACCOUNT OF A FAST, UNDERTAKEN FOR THE CURE OF A PROFOUND BLOOD
DISEASE.
The following account of a fast is worthy of attention. It is rigidly
accurate _in principle_, as far as I could make it so, and I am
responsible for its truthfulness. But the subject of it, feeling that
he is engaged in a duty and "labour of love," as he expresses it, is
yet naturally anxious to prevent his identity from being discovered;
and so, while the facts of the narrative are true in principle they
have been varied in a few details for the purpose of preventing the
recognition of the subject of them.
They occurred in the history of a man of about 40 years of age, who
fell ill of an infectious disease some 20 years ago, while living
abroad. The exact time of the infection is not known. The patient was
treated by qualified doctors living in the same country as himself,
and there is no reason to believe that he was not properly and
skilfully treated. He had, however, for years buoyed himself up with
the hope that he should be able to come to England for the best
treatment, and recently he found himself in this country for that
purpose. It goes without saying that the eminent men consulted treated
him after the most modern and approved methods, which were also, so
far as knowledge goes, the most likely to benefit him. Not only as to
treatment must it be assumed that the best was done, but the diagnosis
also is supported by the authority of the doctors seen, and was
confirmed by physiological and pathological investigation. This would
be recognised if it were possible to publish names, places and dates
which are withheld from the courteous reader for the reason already
given. I can only say that I entirely concur in the diagnosis and in
the suitability of the treatment.
The man came under my care on a Sunday, the fast, which is the subject
matter of this communication, having been commenced on the Friday six
weeks before that day, the last food having been taken on the Thursday
at 5 P.M. I saw him, therefore, on the forty-fifth day of the fast.
His pulse was 59, soft, steady, regular. Temp. 96.8 degrees, about 11
A.M. He was able to be up, and walked actively, all his bodily
movements being active and his mind quite clear and rational. His
weight on the day after I first saw him was, in the same clothes as
when weighed at the beginning of the fast, 129+1/2 lbs. He said he
weighed 171 lbs. on the machine at the commencement, and therefore the
loss of bodily weight up to that time was 41.5 lbs. The average loss
of weight during the 46 days of the fast was about nine-tenths of a
pound daily if the 41.5 lbs. loss is divided by the 46 days of the
continuance of the fast up to that time--41.5/46=.9 lbs. almost
exactly.