impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit
of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and lessons
to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day. In the
whole of this time there is no kind of effort to train the physical
system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was attempted
years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now, from the
time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools.
One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which formerly
made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even in his leisure hours he
no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he learns to sit still, and by
and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and vigorous motion
the exception, for most of the hours of the day. The education thus
begun goes on from primary to high school, from high school to college,
from college through professional studies of law, medicine, or theology,
with this steady contempt for the body, with no provision for its
culture, training, or development, but rather a direct and evident
provision for its deterioration and decay.
The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms,
lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries,
where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their
earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would
answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children
come to a middle life without joy,--a life whose best estate is a sort
of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem
to feel for God's gift of fresh air, and their resolution to breathe as
little of it as possible, could only come from a long course of
education, in which they have been accustomed to live without it. Let
any one notice the conduct of our American people travelling in railroad
cars. We will suppose that about half of them are what might be called
well-educated people, who have learned in books, or otherwise, that the
air breathed from the lungs is laden with impurities,--that it is
noxious and poisonous; and yet, travel with these people half a day, and
you would suppose from their actions that they considered the external
air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that the only
course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
breathing over and over the vapor from each others' lungs. If a person
in despair at the intolerable foulness raises a window, what frowns from
all the neighboring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who
always seem the first to be apprehensive! The request to "put down that
window" is almost sure to follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain
have rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the cars, for
conductors and passengers are both of one mind, that these ventilators
are inlets of danger, and must be kept carefully closed.
Railroad travelling in America is systematically, and one would think
carefully, arranged so as to violate every possible law of health. The
old rule to keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely reversed.
A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum of air to oppression, while a
stream of cold air is constantly circulating about the lower
extremities. The most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceivable
are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations for the confusion and
distress of the stomach. Rarely can a traveller obtain so innocent a
thing as a plain good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake,
doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are almost forced upon him
at every stopping-place. In France, England, and Germany the railroad
cars are perfectly ventilated; the feet are kept warm by flat cases
filled with hot water and covered with carpet, and answering the double
purpose of warming the feet and diffusing an agreeable temperature
through the car, without burning away the vitality of the air; while the
arrangements at the refreshment-rooms provide for the passenger as
wholesome and well-served a meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be
obtained in any home circle.
What are we to infer concerning the home habits of a nation of men who
so resignedly allow their bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in
travelling over such an extent of territory as is covered by our
railroad lines? Does it not show that foul air and improper food are too
much matters of course to excite attention? As a writer in "The Nation"
has lately remarked, it is simply and only because the American nation
like to have unventilated cars, and to be fed on pie and coffee at
stopping-places, that nothing better is known to our travellers; if
there were any marked dislike of such a state of things on the part of
the people, it would not exist. We have wealth enough, and enterprise
enough, and ingenuity enough, in our American nation, to compass with
wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us desirable. An army
was improvised when an army was wanted,--and an army more perfectly
equipped, more bountifully fed, than so great a body of men ever was
before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, and Christian Commissions all
arose out of the simple conviction of the American people that they must
arise. If the American people were equally convinced that foul air was a
poison,--that to have cold feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of
illness,--that maple-sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie, doughnuts,
and peanuts are not diet for reasonable beings,--they would have
railroad accommodations very different from those now in existence.
We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. What better illustration
could be given of the utter contempt with which the laws of bodily
health are treated, than the condition of these places? Our lawyers are
our highly educated men. They have been through high-school and college
training, they have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under an exhausted
receiver, and of course they know that foul, unventilated rooms are bad
for the health; and yet generation after generation of men so taught and
trained will spend the greater part of their lives in rooms notorious
for their close and impure air, without so much as an attempt to remedy
the evil. A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among
court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar;
lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their
vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have
actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,--victims of the fearful
pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths
of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and
of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable
examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet,
strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and
give the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the
world's affairs.
But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all buildings devoted
especially to the good of the soul, are equally witness of the mind's
disdain of the body's needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
soul. In how many of these places has the question of a thorough
provision of fresh air been even considered? People would never think of
bringing a thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping them there,
without making preparations to feed them. Bread and butter, potatoes and
meat, must plainly be found for them; but a thousand human beings are
put into a building to remain a given number of hours, and no one asks
the question whether means exist for giving each one the quantum of
fresh air needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims will
consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, getting red in the
face, with confused and sleepy brains, while a minister with a yet
redder face and a more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the mysteries of faith.
How many churches are there that for six or eight months in the year are
never ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of doors? The
foul air generated by one congregation is locked up by the sexton for
the use of the next assembly; and so gathers and gathers from week to
week, and month to month, while devout persons upbraid themselves, and
are ready to tear their hair, because they always feel stupid and sleepy
in church. The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries would
remove that spiritual deadness of which their prayers and hymns
complain. A man hoeing his corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and
alert, his mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, and
thinks of many a thing that might be said at the prayer-meeting at
night. But at night, when he sits down in a little room where the air
reeks with the vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of kerosene
lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and drowsy,--without emotion,
without thought, without feeling,--and he rises and reproaches himself
for this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all that is within
him to bless the Lord; but the indignant body, abused, insulted,
ignored, takes the soul by the throat, and says, "If you won't let _me_
have a good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, with
ministers and with those people whose moral organization leads them to
take most interest in them, often end in periods of bodily ill-health
and depression. But is there any need of this? Suppose that a revival of
religion required, as a formula, that all the members of a given
congregation should daily take a minute dose of arsenic in concert,--we
should not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill effects
therefrom; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms are now arranged, a daily
prayer-meeting is often nothing more nor less than a number of persons
spending half an hour a day breathing poison from each other's lungs.
There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply
of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The
body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a
contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper,
and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to celestial
regions.
This branch of our subject we will quit with one significant anecdote. A
certain rural church was somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic
architecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, the rules of
Gothic symmetry requiring very small windows, which could be only
partially opened. Everybody was affected alike in this church; minister
and people complained that it was like the enchanted ground in the
Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they would, sleep was ever at their elbows;
the blue, red, and green of the painted windows melted into a rainbow
dimness of hazy confusion; and ere they were aware, they were off on a
cloud to the land of dreams.
An energetic sister in the church suggested the inquiry, whether it was
ever ventilated, and discovered that it was regularly locked up at the
close of service, and remained so till opened for the next week. She
suggested the inquiry, whether giving the church a thorough airing on
Saturday would not improve the Sunday services; but nobody acted on her
suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton's key one Saturday night,
and went into the church and opened all the windows herself, and let
them remain so for the night. The next day everybody remarked the
improved comfort of the church, and wondered what had produced the
change. Nevertheless, when it was discovered, it was not deemed a matter
of enough importance to call for an order on the sexton to perpetuate
the improvement.
The ventilation of private dwellings in this country is such as might be
expected from that entire indifference to the laws of health manifested
in public establishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance up
through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for a night at the
taverns which he will usually find at the end of each day's stage. The
bed-chamber into which he will be ushered will be the concentration of
all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the vegetables in the
cellar,--cabbages, turnips, and potatoes; and this fragrance is confined
and retained by the custom of closing the window-blinds and dropping
the inside curtains, so that neither air nor sunshine enters in to
purify. Add to this the strong odor of a new feather-bed and pillows,
and you have a combination of perfumes most appalling to a delicate
sense. Yet travellers take possession of these rooms, sleep in them all
night without raising the window or opening the blinds, and leave them
to be shut up for other travellers.
The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be an hermetically closed
box, opened only twice a year, for spring and fall cleaning; but for the
rest of the time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty
country housekeepers often adopt the custom of making their beds on the
instant after they are left, without airing the sheets and mattresses;
and a bed so made gradually becomes permeated with the insensible
emanations of the human body, so as to be a steady corrupter of the
atmosphere.
In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the throat of the
chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and a close stove is
introduced to help burn out the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room
like this, from five to ten persons will spend about eight months of the
year, with no other ventilation than that gained by the casual opening
and shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption every year
sweeps away its thousands?--that people are suffering constant chronic
ailments,--neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the host of indefinite
bad feelings that rob life of sweetness and flower and bloom?
A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community would not gain
in health by the demolition of all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests
the question, whether the evils from foul air are not so great and so
constant, that they countervail the advantages of shelter. Consumptive
patients far gone have been known to be cured by long journeys, which
have required them to be day and night in the open air. Sleep under the
open heaven, even though the person be exposed to the various accidents
of weather, has often proved a miraculous restorer after everything else
had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so healing and preserving
a thing, some means might be found to keep the air in a house just as
pure and vigorous as it is outside.
An article in the May number of "Harpers' Magazine" presents drawings of
a very simple arrangement by which any house can be made thoroughly
self-ventilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists in two
things,--a perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul
air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, and the
constant supply of pure air.
One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded against,--we mean
imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thoroughness in execution is the sin of
our American artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly made
that more or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of the
dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made to live, because
the gas kills them; and yet their occupants do not seem to reflect that
an air in which a plant cannot live must be dangerous for a human being.
The very clemency and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently
violate her laws is one great cause why men are, physically speaking,
such sinners as they are. If foul air poisoned at once and completely,
we should have well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have.
But because people can go on for weeks, months, and years, breathing
poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly lowering the tone of their vital
powers, and yet be what they call "pretty well, I thank you," sermons on
ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song. "I don't see but
we are well enough, and we never took much pains about these things.
There's air enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors opening
and windows occasionally lifted, the air of houses is generally good
enough";--and so the matter is dismissed.
One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now abroad in the world,
giving lessons on health to the children of men. The cholera is like the
angel whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebellious
Israelites. "Beware of him, obey his voice, and provoke him not; for he
will not pardon your transgressions." The advent of this fearful
messenger seems really to be made necessary by the contempt with which
men threat the physical laws of their being. What else could have
purified the dark places of New York? What a wiping-up and reforming and
cleansing is going before him through the country! At last we find that
Nature is in earnest, and that her laws cannot be always ignored with
impunity. Poisoned air is recognized at last as an evil,--even although
the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted; and if all the
precautions that men are now willing to take could be made perpetual,
the alarm would be a blessing to the world.
Like the principles of spiritual religion, the principles of physical
religion are few and easy to be understood. An old medical apothegm
personifies the hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise, and
Quiet; and these four will be found, on reflection, to cover the whole
ground of what is required to preserve human health. A human being whose
lungs have always been nourished by pure air, whose stomach has been fed
only by appropriate food, whose muscles have been systematically
trained by appropriate exercises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by
faith in God and a good conscience, has _perfect physical religion_.
There is a line where physical religion must necessarily overlap
spiritual religion and rest upon it. No human being can be assured of
perfect health, through all the strain and wear and tear of such cares
and such perplexities as life brings, without the rest of _faith in
God_. An unsubmissive, unconfiding, unresigned soul will make vain the
best hygienic treatment; and, on the contrary, the most saintly
religious resolution and purpose may be defeated and vitiated by an
habitual ignorance and disregard of the laws of the physical system.
_Perfect_ spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect physical
religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much
taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not
simply in our spirits, but in our _bodies_ and spirits. The only example
of perfect manhood the world ever saw impresses us more than anything
else by an atmosphere of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a
steadiness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his evolution of
the sublimest truths under the strain of the most absorbing and intense
excitement, that could come only from the _one_ perfectly trained and
developed body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the One Perfect
Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on foot from city to city, always
calm yet always fervent, always steady yet glowing with a white heat of
sacred enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and afterwards to
continue in prayer all night, with unshaken nerves, sedately patient,
serenely reticent, perfectly self-controlled, walked the earth, the only
man that perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his spirit.
It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his disciples he chose plain
men from the laboring classes, who had lived the most obediently to the
simple, unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good and pure
bodies,--simple, natural, childlike, healthy men,--and baptized their
souls with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have never been sufficiently
understood. The basis of them lies in the solemn declaration, that our
bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all abuse of them
is of the nature of sacrilege. Reverence for the physical system, as the
outward shrine and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
its physical immortality, sets the last crown of honor upon it. That
bodily system which God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immortal companion,
must necessarily be dear and precious in the eyes of its Creator. The
one passage in the New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly
is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of what is to come:
"He shall change our _vile_ bodies, that they may be fashioned like his
glorious body." From this passage has come abundance of reviling of the
physical system. Memoirs of good men are full of abuse of it, as the
clog, the load, the burden, the chain. It is spoken of as pollution, as
corruption,--in short, one would think that the Creator had imitated the
cruelty of some Oriental despots who have been known to chain a
festering corpse to a living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these
pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by the
persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the
bodily system; and the body, outraged and down-trodden, has turned
traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who
can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a
neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,--temptations to anger,
to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and
passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from
such a companion.
But that human body which God declares expressly was made to be the
temple of the Holy Spirit, which he considers worthy to be perpetuated
by a resurrection and an immortal existence, cannot be intended to be a
clog and a hindrance to spiritual advancement. A perfect body, working
in perfect tune and time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul
approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. It is only through the
images of things which our _bodily_ senses have taught us, that we can
form any conception of that future bliss; and the more perfect these
senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be.
The conclusion of the whole matter, and the practical application of
this sermon, is:--First, that all men set themselves to form the idea of
what perfect health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and
their children. Second, that with a view to this they study the religion
of the body, in such simple and popular treatises as those of George
Combe, Dr. Dio Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts
practise what they there learn. Third, that the training of the bodily
system should form a regular part of our common-school education,--every
common school being provided with a well-instructed teacher of
gymnastics; and the growth and development of each pupil's body being as
much noticed and marked as is now the growth of his mind. The same
course should be continued and enlarged in colleges and female
seminaries, which should have professors of hygiene appointed to give
thorough instruction concerning the laws of health.
And when this is all done, we may hope that crooked spines, pimpled
faces, sallow complexions, stooping shoulders, and all other signs
indicating an undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a
few generations, disappear from the earth, and men will have bodies
which will glorify God, their great Architect.