"Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide."
As we are hastily reading books and papers we continually come across
maxims, epigrams, and short, pithy sayings that attract us. We wish we
could not only remember them, but also often put them in practice, but
they slip our mind and actions almost immediately. From time to time the
author has collected fruit from the vast field of health of its kindred
subjects, and placed the best of them in this book for the reader's
careful consideration. Among the multitude of "Don'ts" for politeness
are the following for health alone:--
"Don't endeavor to rest the mind by absolute inactivity; let it seek its
rest in work in other channels, and thus rest the tired part of the
brain.
"Don't delude yourself into the belief that you are an exception as far
as sleep is concerned; the normal average of sleep is eight hours.
"Don't allow your servants to put meat and vegetables in the same
compartments of the refrigerator.
"Don't keep the parlor dark unless you value your carpet more than your
and your children's health.
"Don't forget that moral defects are as often the cause as they are the
effects of physical faults.
"Don't direct special mental or physical energies to more than eight
hours' work in each day.
"Don't neglect to have your dentist examine your teeth at least every
three months.
"Don't read, write, or do any delicate work unless receiving the light
from the left side.
"Don't pamper the appetite with such variety of food that may lead to
excess.
"Don't read in street-cars or other jolting vehicles.
"Don't eat or drink hot and cold things immediately in succession.
"Don't pick the teeth with pins or any other hard substance.
"Don't sleep in a room provided with stationary washstands.
"Don't neglect any opportunity to insure a variety of food."
There are many things we should _never_ do. Among them are:--
"Never go to bed with cold or damp feet.
"Never lean with the back upon anything that is cold.
"Never begin a journey until the breakfast has been eaten.
"Never take warm drinks and then immediately go out in the cold.
"Never ride in an open carriage or near the window of a car for a moment
after exercise; it is dangerous to health or even life.
"Never omit regular bathing, for unless the skin is in regular condition
the cold will close the pores and favor congestion or other diseases.
"Never stand still in cold weather, especially after having taken a
slight degree of exercise."
Perhaps among the following you may find succinctly stated what will be
of eminent value:--
"Focus your brain as you would a burning-glass. Butter enough for a
slice won't do for a whole loaf.
"Keep empty-headed between times. Mental furniture should be very
select. Useless lumber in the upper story is worse than a pocketful of
oyster shells. Leave your facts on your book shelves, where you can find
them when wanted. A walking encyclopedia cannot work for want of room
to turn round in his own head.
"Don't tax your memory. Make a memorandum, and put it in your pocket.
Every unnecessary thought is a waste of effective force.
"Don't believe that muscular exercise contracts head work. Brain and
muscle are bung-hole and spigot of the same barrel. It is poor economy
to keep both running.
"Pin your faith to the genius of hard work. It is the safest, most
reliable, and most manageable sort of genius.
"Amuse yourself. This is the first principle of good hard work. And the
second is like unto it.
"Don't work too much. It is quantity, not quality, that kills.
Therefore, work only in the day-time. Night was made for sleep. And loaf
on Sunday. Six days' work earns the right to go a-fishing, or to church,
or to any harmless diversion, on the seventh.
"Go to work promptly, but slowly. A late, hurried start keeps you out of
breath all day trying to catch up.
"When you stop work forget it. It spoils brains to simmer after a hard
boil.
"Feed regularly, largely, and slowly. Lose no meal; approach it
respectfully and give it gratefully. No more can be got out of a man
than is put into him.
"Sleep one-third of your whole life. How I hate the moralist who croaks
over time wasted in sleep. Besides, sleep is, on the whole, the most
satisfactory mode of existence."
Misconceivements.--"There are a number of mistakes made even by wise
people while passing through life. Prominent among them is the idea that
you must labor when you are not in a fit condition to do so; to think
that the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become;
to go to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every
hour taken from sleep is an hour gained; to imagine that, if a little
work or exercise is good, violent and prolonged exercise is better; to
conclude that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep
in; to eat as if you had only a moment to finish a meal in, or to eat
without any appetite, or to continue after it has been satisfied,
merely to please the taste; to believe that children can do as much work
as grown people, and that the more hours they study the more they learn;
to imagine that whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better
(as alcoholic stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the
after-effects; to take off proper clothing out of season because you
have become heated; to sleep exposed to a direct draught; to think any
nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases flesh is
heir to."
Weariness.--"A tramp knows what it is to be leg-weary, a farm laborer to
be body-weary, a literary man to be brain-weary, and a sorrowing man to
be soul-weary. The sick are often weary of life itself. Weariness is
generally a physiological 'ebb-tide,' which time and patience will
convert into a 'flow'. It is never well to whip or spur a worn-out
horse, except in the direst straits. If he mends his pace in obedience
to the stimulus, every step is a drop drawn from his life-blood.
Idleness is not one of the faults of the present age; weariness is one
of the commonest experiences. The checks that many a man draws on his
physiological resources are innumerable; and, as these resources are
strictly limited, like any other ordinary banking account, it is very
easy to bring about a balance on the wrong side. Adequate rest is one
kind of repayment to the bank, sound sleep is another, regular eating
and good digestion another. One day's holiday in the week and one or two
months in the year for those who work exceptionally hard usually bring
the credit balance to a highly favorable condition; and thus with care
and management physiological solvency is secured and maintained."
"What Produces Death.--Someone says that few men die of age. Almost all
persons die of disappointment, personal, mental, or bodily toil, or
accident. The passions kill men sometimes even suddenly. The common
expression, 'choked with passion,' has little exaggeration in it, for
even though not suddenly fatal, strong passions shorten life.
Strong-bodied men often die young; weak men live longer than the strong,
for the strong use their strength and the weak have none to use. The
latter take care of themselves, the former do not. As it is with the
body, so it is with the mind and temper. The strong are apt to break,
or, like the candle, run; the weak burn out. The inferior animals, which
live temperate lives, have generally their prescribed term of years. The
horse lives 25 years, the ox 15 or 20, the lion about 20, the hog 10 or
12, the rabbit 8, the guinea-pig 6 or 7. The numbers all bear proportion
to the time the animal takes to grow to its full size. But man, of all
animals, is one that seldom comes up to the average. He ought to live a
hundred years, according to the physiological law, for five times 20 are
100; but instead of that he scarcely reaches an average of four times
the growing period. The reason is obvious--man is not only the most
irregular and most intemperate, but the most laborious and hard-working
of all animals. He is always the most irritable of all animals, and
there is reason to believe, though we cannot tell what an animal
secretly feels, that more than any other animal man cherishes wrath to
keep it warm, and consumes himself with the fire of his own
reflections."
Provided you have babies in your family go through the following and see
if you can't train your child so it shall be among the last seventeen
mentioned:--
"Take your pencil and follow me, while we figure on what will happen to
the 1,000,000 of babies that will have been born in the last 1,000,000
seconds.
"I believe that is about the average--'one every time the clock ticks.'
"One year hence, if statistics don't belie us, we will have lost 150,000
of these little 'prides of the household.'
"A year later 53,000 more will be keeping company with those that have
gone before.
"At the end of the third year we find that 22,000 more have dropped by
the wayside.
"The fourth year they have become rugged little darlings, not nearly so
susceptible to infantile diseases, only 8,000 having succumbed to the
rigors imposed by the master.
"By the time they have arrived at the age of twelve years but a paltry
few hundred leave the track each year.
"After threescore years have come and gone we find less trouble in
counting the army with which we started in the fall of 1889.
"Of the 1,000,000 with which we began our count, but 370,000 remain;
630,000 have gone the way of all the world, and the remaining few have
forgotten that they ever existed. At the end of eighty, or, taking our
mode of reckoning, by the year 1969 A. D., there are still 97,000
gray-haired, shaky old grannies and grandfathers, toothless, hairless,
and happy.
"In the year 1984 our 1,000,000 babies with which we started in 1889
will have dwindled to an insignificant 223 helpless old wrecks,
'stranded on the shores of time.'
"In 1992 all but seventeen have left this mundane sphere forever, while
the last remaining wreck will probably, in seeming thoughtlessness,
watch the sands filter through the hour-glass of time, and die in the
year 1997 at the age of one hundred and eight.
"What a bounteous supply of food for reflection!"
"Laughter as a Health Promoter.--In his 'Problem of Health,' Dr. Greene
says that there is not the remotest corner or little inlet of the minute
blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the
convulsions occasioned by good hearty laughter. The life principle, or
the central man, is shaken to its innermost depths, sending new tides of
life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good
health to the persons who indulge therein. The blood moves more rapidly
and conveys a different impression to all the organs of the body, as it
visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man is laughing,
from what it does at other times. For this reason every good hearty
laugh in which a person indulges tends to lengthen his life, conveying,
as it does, new and distinct stimulus to the vital forces."