measure:--
_Breakfast._--One egg lightly boiled, poached or baked, with two
Granose biscuits and fresh butter, eaten dry.
_Dinner._--Brusson Jeune bread (one or two rolls) with butter, and
small helping of vegetables, cooked at _first_ in the orthodox way.
_Supper._--Plateful of boiled rice (cooked dry in the Indian
fashion[4]) with a tablespoonful of good malt extract.
No sugar, honey, stewed fruit, or dried fruit should be taken until
improvement has set in. As little fluid as possible should be taken
until the stomach has regained more tone and become more normal in
size.
[4] See _The Healthy Life Cook Book_. 1s. net (post free, 1s. 1+1/2d.).
SEVERE DIGESTIVE CATARRH.
Miss S.L.P. writes:--I should like a little help as to diet. I
have just had an attack of epidemic influenza with throat
trouble, so that I feel very much run down and unfit for a diet
too depleting in character. For over four years I have adopted a
non-flesh diet on account of a tendency to chronic catarrh of the
whole alimentary tract, due to rheumatic tendencies which affect
me internally rather than externally. The continuous damp weather
has produced much gastric irritation, and frequent acidity.
I cannot discover a diet that is convenient and at the same time
sufficiently nourishing. I lose flesh on what I take, and I have
none to spare, though at one time I was inclined to be stout. My
age is forty-eight.
I take three meals a day. A light breakfast either of "Maltweat"
bread or "P.R." Cracker biscuits and butter, with tomato or fresh
fruit or occasionally an egg. For midday meal an egg or milled
cheese, or nuts or cream cheese, with a baked potato and a
conservatively cooked vegetable. Occasionally I have a little
salad and grated carrot, but unless I am better than usual I
cannot digest these. The evening meal consists of "Maltweat"
bread or "P.R." Cracker biscuits or Granose flakes, with cream
cheese. As a child I suffered constantly from colds in the head,
but now my troubles are oftener internal.
The action of the bowels is irregular. I depend chiefly upon an
enema of warm water when constipation is present.
I never drink tea, only hot water, or Emprote and water, or
occasionally vegetable juices or fruit juices. I find I am better
without much fluid.
So far as it is possible to judge from this letter, this correspondent
is suffering not only from stomach and bowel catarrh, but her
condition as a whole is unsatisfactory. The vital force is depleted
and the nervous system is not doing efficient work.
She needs suitable treatment to remove the acid and toxins with which
the system is evidently clogged. This is not an easy task, for as soon
as elimination begins trouble arises in the form of influenza or other
similar derangements. These are probably little else but attempts on
the part of nature to rouse the vital force of the body into action
with a view to clearing out the clogging poisons.
Waste clearing should be done gradually. The skin should be made to
act better by means of home Turkish baths, or by wet-sheet packs. Then
mustard poultices can be applied _along the course of the spine_ and
massage with suitable manipulations can be applied to the muscles and
bones which make up the spine. The daily practising of the excellent
and simple breathing and bending exercises described in Muller's _My
System for Ladies_[5] will be very helpful. By means such as these the
body will be gradually cleared of its poisons, and so the nervous
system will be made to do better work.
The diet specified can be continued.
H. VALENTINE KNAGGS.
[5] 2s. 8d. post free from the office of _The Healthy Life_, 3 Amen
Corner, London, E.C.
* * * * *
_May we ask the co-operation of all our readers during the holiday
season in the following way. On holidays you are bound to meet fresh
people, and make new acquaintances, and even friends. We suggest you
purchase a few extra copies of _THE HEALTHY LIFE_ before you start and
hand them on to any likely to be interested. People tell us the
magazine is its own recommendation. This does not mean that you need
not add your own. The circulation grows steadily, but it is far short
of what it might easily be if every reader were to gain one fresh
reader every month._--[EDS.]
MORE APPRECIATIONS.
I want to say how very interesting and helpful I find _The Healthy
Life_, and it is always a pleasure to buy an extra copy to give to
friends, for I always feel it will do them good to read it, and
perhaps make regular subscribers of them.
H. BARTHOLOMEW, Knebworth.
THE
HEALTHY
LIFE
The Independent
Health Magazine.
3 AMEN CORNER LONDON E.C.
VOL. V AUGUST
No. 25. 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.
The pursuit of health, considered from the negative standpoint, is the
flight from pain.
And pain is the great mystery of life.
James Hinton, himself a well-known physician of his time, attempted to
solve the mystery of pain by showing that it is the accompaniment of
imperfection. That what is now experienced as pain might be exquisite
pleasure given a higher stage of human development.
But this, after all, only shifts the mystery one step farther. Instead
of the mystery of pain we have the mystery of imperfection. Yet to
image perfection is always to image something incapable of growth or
further development.
Take, for example, a perfect circle. So long as it remains unbroken,
flawless, the line (or infinite number of lines) composing it cannot
be continued or extended. But given a break in the line and it may be
continued round and round, up and up (or down and down) into an
infinitely ascending spiral. This possibility of extension depends on
a break, on an imperfection.
It does not follow, of course, that every flaw in human nature is
always the starting-point of new growth, every failure a
stepping-stone to greater knowledge, but the possibility is there. It
is for men to see that they do not neglect their opportunities.--[EDS.]
IMAGINATION IN PLAY.
_Regular readers will recognise in this wonderfully simple and
suggestive article a continuation of the series previously entitled
"Healthy Brains." The author of "The Children All Day Long" is an
intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she
has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true
health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness._--[EDS.]
The fruit of imagination ripens into deeds actually done in the
service of man: its flower brightens the whole of life and makes it
fragrant, from the budding-time of children's play and laughter to the
developed blossoms of the creative imagination which we call painting
or poetry or music.
Play and art have this in common, that they are activities pursued for
the sake of the activity itself, not as a means to any other object,
not aiming at any material usefulness. Actually, of course, there is
nothing more useful, on every scale of usefulness, than the
development of the individual in art or play, but these would never be
really themselves while an ulterior purpose formed a background to
them in consciousness.
Physical exercises devised for the sake of health are a more or less
pleasant form of work; they do not take the place of play. Our
ordinary work is usually more or less one-sided and unbalanced in the
demands it makes upon us; we therefore try to find what other set of
movements will undo this unbalancement and give us back unbiased
bodies. When that is done, and not till then, we get freedom, and it
is at that moment that real "play" begins--the use of the freed
muscles according to our own will and pleasure.
The same thing is perhaps true in connection with our minds. We all
see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work
your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to
the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all
laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in your own
line of work."
We have come to see that this kind of effort leads often to nervous
breakdown and early death; always to a certain narrowing of sympathy
and hardening of method even in the career itself. So we
conscientiously "take up" a hobby or a sport and set aside some hour
or day for indulgence in it. We make it a duty to lay aside for the
time being all idea of duties; part of our work is to learn to rest.
So far so good. But does all this go far enough?
Work imposed by any set of outer needs puts the whole being under a
certain strain. The aim of remedial exercises, prescribed rest-times
and legal holidays is to undo this strain, to unwind us from our coil
by twisting us the other way.
When this has been satisfactorily done, too often the person
responsible thinks that this is enough. But it is really and truly at
this moment that one is beginning one's real life.
When the body is freed from strain and weariness is the time to leap
and dance and sing and wrestle.
When the mind is free from prejudice and weariness is the time for its
original activity to begin; new thoughts spring up unbidden and the
creative imagination lives and grows.
(In the sphere of will, many great sages have said that an analogous
sequence holds good. When the whole emotional and moral nature has
thrown itself in a particular direction, and then an unwinding has
taken place, the moment of completed renunciation has been said to be
the dawn of some great new spiritual light.)
Who does not know the peaceful activity of a Sunday evening, the
fruitful quiet of a long railway journey or sea-voyage _at the end_ of
a holiday? Two friends walk slowly home together after an exciting
expedition or debate; two girls give each other their confidence while
brushing their hair after a dance.
Why is this so? Nowadays people are very ready to answer the question
by refusing the fact. It is waste of time not to be _doing_ something
strenuously. Rest is almost as strenuous as everything else; it is to
be thorough while it is the duty on hand and is to fit exactly on to
the work time, without overlapping but without interspace.
In this way too often the imagination, the really individual part of
the mind, is starved and atrophied. Especially in childhood there
ought to be a space left between useful work and ordered play for the
individually invented games, the pursuits that are not for any
definite end, for dreams and lived-out tales, when the child may make
what he likes, do what he likes, and in imagination be what he likes.
If we scrupulously respected this growing-time we should soon have a
race of sturdier mettle altogether. Just now this particular want is
probably most nearly supplied among elementary school children than
among those who have more "educational advantages"; they "go out to
play" in the streets for hours every day, and one cannot help thinking
that it is the vitality thus evolved that keeps most of them healthy
and happy in spite of many hardships.
In later life, if we really want to make something of our lives, we
shall do well to insist an keeping such a margin of free time to
ourselves. It need not be long. Five minutes, if one really sails away
in the ship of imagination, will take us to fairyland and back again.
But the five minutes (or the day in the country, or the week of quiet,
or whatever we take or can get) must really and truly be free; we
must have the courage to seek for what we really want, and we shall
have the inestimable reward of finding what we really are.
E.M. COBHAM.
HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT?[6]
[6] See July number.
For some years I lived according to the advice given by "M.D." with
regard to the quantity of proteid that should be taken. But experience
led me to believe that it was wrong. In recent years my diet has
consisted of the following quantities per annum:--
Three to four bushels of wheat.
Seventy pounds of oats.
One bushel of nuts (measured in the shells).
And with these foods rich in proteid, I have taken plenty of raw
vegetables and fruit, and three to four gallons of olive oil.
I do not mention this as an ideal, in order to suggest another and
better standard than that of "M.D." I do not think any such thing as a
standard really exists or can exist. But I mention it to show how far
I have travelled away from where I was.
I take it that all food reformers will agree that the main reason for
food reform is to make the body a more harmonious instrument for the
true life of man, and that carries with it the belief that there is
some correspondence, if we cannot yet see absolute unity, between the
physical and the spiritual. Now the law of life, according to Christ,
is one of continual progress towards perfection and I do not see how
this will harmonise with the teaching of a fixed law for the body. All
my experience and observation point to a progressive law for the body,
and I do not know of a single fact contrary to it.
My first point, then, is that there is no such thing as a standard of
proteid needed by the body. All that can be said is this, that if you
take a man who has been fed on a certain quantity for such and such a
time and then feed him on a certain other quantity, alterations in
the physical condition will appear. But who can say whether these
changes are attributable merely to a deficiency or to a previous
excess? If "M.D." and his patients take excessive food they naturally
get trouble from stored poisons when they reduce the quantity. But why
put all the trouble down to present deficiency instead of to previous
excess? To this I can find no satisfactory answer.
If we have got our bodies into so hopeless a condition that we cannot
use our God-given instincts, tastes and feelings in the first place,
the wisdom of troubling much about the continuance of bodily life
would be doubtful; and, in the second place, one would need most
overwhelming signs of knowledge to substitute for them. But where are
they? There is no agreement between those who have been taught
physiology. On the one hand, "M.D." gives a proteid standard, now
impossible to myself, and I believe to many others, for it would
involve eating a nauseating quantity; and, on the other hand, another
doctor, presumably acquainted with the same physiology, tells me I
cannot eat too little, so long as I do not persistently violate true
hunger and taste. Then another doctor gives quite a different
standard, and a much lower one. If we discard our natural guides,
which of the claimants to knowledge is to be followed, and is there
any knowledge at all such as is claimed?
Imagine what a mockery it would have been to give such a standard as
that of "M.D." to the agricultural labourer about the middle of last
century, a typical one with a large family, and one who worked as men
do not work to-day, and had to rear his family on a few shillings a
week. How could such a one have provided more than a fraction of what
"M.D." says is necessary, either for himself or his children?
The broad fact is, that all the hardest work of the world has always
been done by those who get the least food. As one who has had some
experience of labour, I doubt if the workers could have done so much
if it had not been for a spare diet. Certain it is, that since they
have more to eat, they are much less inclined to work.
My contention, then, is that there is no fixed standard of proteid
needed by the body, but that the quantity depends on the development
that is in progress and is only discoverable by the natural guides of
appetite and taste, ruled by reason and love of others. Moreover, I
contend that even if there were such a standard as "M.D." says
physiology has found, it obviously is not known.
I cannot help recognising in "M.D." one whom I gratefully love and
respect. He helped me on the road, and now that I differ from him I do
not forget it, and I ask his forgiveness if I seem to be arrogant. He
thinks I cannot see what he sees because I am underfed, and I think he
cannot see what I see because he is overfed. In a sense we are both
right, and we form a beautiful illustration of the different states of
mind that belong to different physical conditions. I urge the laymen
like myself not to be afraid of that musty old ill-shaped monster
called Science[7] when he is up against the eternal truths that belong
to every simple untutored man. Shun the monster as you would a priest,
to whom he has a great likeness, and unite with me in a long strong
pull to get "M.D." out of the rut in which the monster holds him, so
that we may have him with us on the road, for he carries much treasure
and we cannot do without him.
A.A. VOYSEY.
[7] I do not wish to be misunderstood. No sane man despises real
science, but when the mixture of science and ignorance, which usually
stalks about in the name of science, wants to usurp our heaven-born
instincts we cannot but notice his ugly and monstrous shape. It is the
function of science, or a true knowledge of details, to fill in the
mosaic of the temple of wisdom, but the mosaic can never be the
structure itself and is only useful and good when it is subservient to
that structure and harmonious with it.
CAMPING OUT.
FOOD QUESTIONS.
"We have to consider," I said, "the question of what food to take and
how to cook it."
"Camping out," said Sylvia, "ought to be a complete holiday from the
food bother. Why not live on unfired food, such as tinned tongue,
sardines and bottled shrimps?"
Thereupon Felix laughed a great laugh, and said: "Just try and do a
thousand miles on sardines."
Felix is Sylvia's brother, who has spent some twenty years in America,
travelling for weeks through country that contained no people, and
spending nearly two years in a single journey to Dawson City and home
again. He plainly knows far more about bed-rock camping than anyone
else in the family and we allowed him to take the floor for a time.
"The first thing is bread." said Felix, "because you can't do without
bread. You must take some yeast or else some baking-powder with you to
make it rise, or you must bake it very quickly so that the steam
aerates it. You might take a Dutch oven with you, but it's nothing
like the Dutch oven that you know in this country. It is an iron pot
on three legs, with an iron lid. You stand it in the fire and cover
the lid with hot brands and you can cook anything inside it--ducks and
chunks of venison, and bread of course."
"But Mr Freeman has barred the oven," said Sylvia, "and if we are not
going a thousand miles from home perhaps we can do without it."
"As you like," answered Felix. "I only mention it so that you can get
hold of the general principle. You can make very good bread in a
frying-pan. You must mix the dough up stiff so that when the pan is
nearly upright it won't tumble out. You fix the pan up with a prop
behind it so that the dough faces the fire, quite close, and you draw
some more fire behind it so that the back is warmed as well. When it
burns a good crust on both sides it is done."
"What are flap-jacks," I asked.
"Just pan-cakes made without eggs or milk," said Felix. "You mix a
quart of flour with a tablespoonful of baking-powder and put in water
till it is just so thin that when you take up a spoonful and let it
drop back you can see the shape of it for a few seconds before it
melts into the rest. You fry the batter in bacon fat or butter just
like pan-cakes, and the cakes are very good."
[Illustration: _A Summer Idyll_]
"That's a good tip for us," I said, "and another good thing to take is
cuddy biscuits, a kind of captain's biscuit. Soak them a few minutes
in water or milk and fry them. They're nice with tomatoes or anything,
or by themselves."
"Mebbe," said Felix, and his tone said, "Mebbe not." "I'm only
discussing general principles, and you've got to work your own way out
in the light of them. I've known an outfit come away without a
frying-pan. How do you make bread then?"
We had to give it up, and Felix went on: "Open your flour sack, turn
down the edge like it is in a baker's shop, make a little hole in the
flour and pour in water to make a pond. Mix in what flour you want to
use and get your dough into the shape of a snake, wind it round a
stick and cook it like that. You've got your bread then like a French
roll, and very good it is."
We all liked the idea of making bread every day and eating it hot.
Here was something to be had in camp that you could not get at home.
And we liked the idea of learning our cooking by means of first
principles. Whether we liked it or not, Felix liked talking about it,
and he began to grow anecdotal.
"Once," he said, "I met a whole lot of men, ten of them I should
think, camped on a cold frosty night with nothing to eat. They were
trying to do a journey of thirty miles on rough prairie and their
horses were tired and they could not get on. They had brought their
lunch and eaten it long ago, and they told me they were starving. They
had nothing to eat, nothing to do any cooking with and no wood to make
a fire with. I never saw such hungry people. They were new settlers
just out from England and it was up to me to do something for them.
"'What have you got in that great waggon?' I asked. They told me they
had some sacks of flour and two frozen quarters of beef, but there was
nothing to cook it in and no wood to make a fire.
"There was any amount of cow-dung on the prairie, and it was dry as
chips. I set them collecting that and soon enough had a fire. I filled
a bucket with water and put it on to boil. I chopped off some meat and
put it in. Then I made some dumplings and put them in. You just put
them into boiling water, you know, and then they cook at once on the
outside and don't come to pieces. If they boil too much they get
pappy, and if not done through they're not good. Most dumplings you
eat in England are not done, but mine were just right and those ten
hungry men had just as good a supper as anyone could wish for."
"Tell us about the coffee you used to make," said Sylvia. "What
horrible stuff it must have been."
"The very best coffee ever I drank," said Felix.
"We used to make it in a pot that was nearly a yard high. We never
turned out the grounds, but let them settle and put in a little more
every time we made coffee, till the pot was so full that it wouldn't
hold any more water."
"I don't see anything against it," I said, when Sylvia and Gertrude
were both expressing their horror. "There is no tannin or other bad
principle in coffee and you never get anything worse out of it than
you do at the first soaking."
"The fellows that work the logs on the river have their own kind of
coffee that they call drip coffee," said Felix. "They have a tall pot
like ours was and they tie the coffee in a sack above the water, so
that the water never touches it, but the steam goes up and fetches it
out in drops. They don't change the sack every time, but keep adding
coffee till it won't hold any more."
"The moral of which is?" said Basil, who had for some time been
growing impatient.
"That there are plenty of ways of cooking an egg besides frying it,"
said Felix, "and that a bit of common-sense is about the best article
you can take with you out camping. Take your food as raw as you can
get it and know how to cook it. Also know a good herb when you see it,
and never overlook a chance of getting a meal from the country that
will save your stores."
C.R. FREEMAN.
_Food reformers will have their own opinion about a diet of shrimps,
sardines, tinned tongue and stale coffee when camping out: the most
important part of the outfit is doubtless an adequate supply of
common-sense._--[EDS.]
SEASICKNESS: SOME REMEDIES.
_In the April and May numbers of the present year we published an
article by Mr Hereward Carrington entitled "Seasickness: How Caused,
How Cured." The following supplementary suggestions by the same
well-known writer will be useful to many readers._--[EDS.]