"There is naught like universal co-operation to promote universal
achievement."
_Individuals_ may seek and obtain health through the agencies already,
and to be, suggested. To keep in health, their _neighbors_ must be
induced or compelled to adopt the same course. This is not an absolute
law, but manifestly is very essential. Supposing your own house,
sidewalk, alley, or yard, are comparatively immaculate, it will be
impossible to live without constant danger and exposure if your friend
(or enemy in this sense) has an untidy house, a dirty sidewalk, and a
filthy yard, in your proximity. Then how encouraging to note that health
is as contagious as disease. It even spreads with greater rapidity.
Health is gladly welcomed; disease is shunned like a deadly poison. All
over the world past and contemporary history proves that, once started,
health spreads at a rate that disease cannot follow. What will surely
result? Healthful communities will make healthful municipalities;
healthful municipalities will end in commonwealths and nations of like
character. The whole earth will be leavened. From a record of 34 years
as the average _duration_ of human life, the thermometer of universal
progress will point to the threescore and ten, or 70 years.
If you were induced to smile at the close of the last sentence, it shows
that you are not lost to all sense of appreciation--but quietly put on
your sober cap for a moment and read a few facts on _vital statistics_.
The average length of life up to twenty years ago was 33 years, now it
has reached about 34.8 years. This has not been caused by the _whole_
world becoming more healthful--indeed, some portions of the earth,
including sections of the United States, have retrograded, and the
former limit of _mortality_ has been lowered--but by the health of a
number of _organizations_, _sects_, and individuals who have increased
their standards of regularity, cleanliness, temperance, morality, and
self-control. Thus the average rate of mortality has been raised nearly
2%. An interesting fact which is new to the majority of persons is this,
that the whole sect of _Friends_, or _Quakers_, live an average of 58
years per individual. In the thirty-two years from 1850 to 1882 they
raised the average six years, or about one year in five. With this
ratio, which is itself increasing, the plurality of Quakers will be
centenarians in less than two hundred years--in half that time if
assisted by the world at large. By the foregoing it will be seen that
the whole organization of Friends live 70% longer than the general age
allotted to mankind, which includes them to make up the universal rate.
Another noticeable feature in connection with the Quakers' life is this,
the deaths among them average 18 in every thousand; in the general
population, 22 per thousand; while the amount given to charities per
inhabitant in that sect is $7.78, and in the total population the
average is $1.46. Why this difference in longevity to so marked a
degree?
The _prohibitionist_ will give this reason, that the Friends dissipate
less; the religionists will say they are more truthful, more godly.
While each of the aforementioned reasons have a healthful tendency,
there is a more scientific conclusion, for it is a well-known fact that
there are thousands of cases of longevity of men and women who lack
every moral principle, and dissipate all their lives. The _scientist_
comes to our rescue. He tells us that the Quaker's life is prolonged by
his methodical way of living, evenness of temperament, wearing the same
weight of clothing, allowing nothing to furrow the brow, regularity of
sleeping, drinking, exercising, and eating. He takes no food or drink
into his stomach above 100 degrees or below 50 degrees Fahr. _Boiling_
hot soup and frozen _ice-cream_ are unknown in a Quaker family. This
might convey the idea that ice-cream is foresworn by them. Not entirely
so. They use the same good judgment in that as in every other
indulgence, allowing the cream to rise in temperature from 10 degrees to
15 degrees above the freezing point, to soft consistency, before it is
taken into the stomach. Dr. Ufflemann, a German physician of authority,
draws some important conclusions from his own experiments and those of
others. The rules laid down are briefly:--
1. That, in general, a temperature of food which approaches that of the
blood is most healthful.
2. For quenching the thirst the best temperature is from 50 degrees
Fahr. to 68 degrees Fahr. Americans prefer about 40 degrees.
3. The gulping down of ice-water or hot coffee, etc., means eventually a
stomach damnation.
4. The use of very hot and cold substances, following or alternating, is
injurious to the teeth.
5. Ingestion of cold food and drinks lessens the bodily temperature,
whether it be normal or febrile.
6. Cold food and drinks increase the tendency to cough, by causing,
reflexly, a congestion of the bronchial vessels. Hence persons with
bronchial disease ought not to indulge in cold drinks.
The habits of indulgence in alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, and other
narcotics or stimulants, have less to do than is generally supposed with
longevity, but much to do with happiness, while their abuse or
irregularity determines all for health, happiness, and longevity
combined. Temperance men and moralists will take issue with me, and
undertake to prove that any quantity, no matter how small, of either
alcohol, tobacco, or opium will shorten life; but the facts will not
sustain the assertion. It is the irregularity with which the body is
treated, either by outward application or bathing, in eating, sleeping,
or excess in all vices. For health, a regular gratification in the full
list of vices is better than having no vices--such as are so termed by
the world--and being irregular in everything else. While I do not
believe in practising any form of vice, yet the man who takes six drinks
of alcoholic spirits in reasonable quantities at fixed intervals each
day, smokes six cigars--two after each meal--chews three ounces of
tobacco with the same punctuality every day, eats his meals slowly and
at stated periods, sleeps from 8-1/2 to 9 hours per night between the
same hours, will outlive the man who neither smokes, chews, or drinks,
but does eat and sleep irregularly, and lies awake all night hating his
neighbor for his immoralities. He gets thin and haggard, followed by
all the weaknesses to which his system is heir; while the other man,
with his evenness of nature, habits, and dissipations, enjoys health,
becomes fat, and lives to the proverbial good old age.
Here, then, my reader, we have the explanation why a man may live
through _dissipation_ all his life, and then die only by accident at 80
or 100 years of age. A beggar, miser, or hermit may by degrees contract
the habit of filthiness, non-bathing, scantiness of food and improper
clothing, with such regularity that he will outlive all his friends and
relatives, and be chronicled at his death as one of the _centenarians_.
As an interesting fact, we state that in 1888 a beggar, aged 84, in
Perth, Hungary, tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the
Danube because he was no longer able to support his father and mother,
who were 115 and 110 years old respectively! _Poisons_ may be taken in
infinitesimal doses for a while, then increasing by degrees until
_twenty_ grains of morphia or strychnia may be taken at a single dose
without immediate injury. There is at least one case of positive record
in Colusa County, of this State.
In closing this chapter we wish to call attention to a reasonable result
of true system, or regularity. Here is a _convict_ in the State prison.
Before he was incarcerated his health was imperfect, and he wore a
sallow, dejected look; but behold him after six months of strict
penitentiary discipline; he is a well man, fat and sleek--no longer a
semi-invalid. There are exceptions, but they are due to melancholy
generally. A _soldier_ after he enlists, unless he is exposed to the
constant privations of protracted war, throws off most defects in his
physique. You must know the cause; it is the compulsory regulation of
diet and clothing. Cleanliness and regularity are forced upon them,
showing it to be just what they needed.