There are three serious objections to my health prescriptions ❦ First,
I make no charge for them. Second, they are written in plain English,
without myth, miracle or mystery, and can be understood even by the
mediocre mind. Third, you have to fill the prescription yourself, and
this costs effort. Sickness is a selfish thing. If you are well you are
expected to work, and give your time and talent to helping other people.
If you are sick you are supposed to be immune from many unpleasant
tasks and duties. Mark Twain said he was never really happy except on
two occasions. One was when he was given that Oxford degree and wore a
marvelous red cloak and a mortar-board hat; and the other was when he
had the measles and expected to die. The joy of holding the center of
the stage and having the whole family in tears, just on his own account,
was worth all the pangs ❦ But, indeed, there were no pangs. Mark was a
humorist, and a humorist is a man who has the sense of values, and to
have the sense of values is wisdom. Mark was a great philosopher as well
as a humorist ❦ Not only did he testify that pangs and pains are the
attributes of life, not death, and that there is no pain in death, but
he also gave testimony that sickness is an acute form of selfishness.
The sick man disarranges the entire scheme of house-keeping wherever he
is, unless he be in a hospital. To have his meals served to him in bed
he regards as natural and right ❦ For once he holds the center of the
stage—all dance attendance. Doctors come, nurses run for this and that,
neighbors call and inquire. He is It. ¶ The paranoiac is a person who
craves attention, and rather than go unnoticed, commits crime. Just
observe how most sick people obtrude their maladies upon their friends,
and then tell me whether sickness is not usually a form of paranoia!
Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark
true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long
period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness.
Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the
circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire
system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s
disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor
for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone,
and a surfeit of food. We eat too much and breathe too little ❦ Life is
combustion—the digestive tract is a boiler. And as oxygen is necessary
to fire, so it is to life. The value of exercise in the open air lies
in the fact that it is getting a goodly draft of oxygen through your
system, and this forced draft is both eliminating refuse and burning up
slag ❦ These things are all so trite and true that it seems silly to
write this for cultured people, and yet cultured and educated people are
sick quite as much as the other kind. In fact, more so, since necessity
is often removed and the person has the privilege of going to bed in the
morning, getting up when he pleases, eating a multiplicity of dishes that
set up an internecine war, giving the saw-buck absent treatment, and
forcing or bribing other folks to wait on him. ¶ It is a curious comment
on our civilization to find our great sanitariums and health-resorts
full of college graduates. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Vassar
and Wellesley are all represented constantly at Battle Creek, Dansville,
Mount Clemens, Hot Springs, Richfield and Alma ❦ Imagine an LL. D.
being given vicarious exercise by a healthy colored man who can neither
read nor write; a Ph. D. looked after by a saucy slip of a nurse, in
becoming cap and apron, fresh from the farm or paper-box factory; an
M. D. vigorously Muldooned by a man who knows nothing of medicine, but
something of health! ¶ A great surgeon tells me that he has never yet
seen a case of appendicitis where the patient has not been addicted
to the Beecham Habit. That is to say, this disease is the result of
medicine, just as are many others. ¶ So here is the prescription: Get
the Health Habit—by throwing physic to the dogs, because it will not
hurt the dogs, since they know better than to swallow it; drink plenty
of pure water; eat what you like, but do not overeat; have a regular
daily occupation; breathe much and deeply in the open air; have a veranda
bedroom, open if possible on two sides, or at least sleep in a room with
windows run up wide, even if the water-pitcher freezes; think well of
everybody, especially doctors, for good doctors everywhere are practising
a Science of Prevention, and will corroborate these suggestions ❦ They
are doing the best they can, considering the ignorance, superstition and
inertia which they have to combat—often in their own minds, and those of
others.
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